Remember when we were kids and the thing we hated most in the world was nap time?? Remember trying to negotiate with your parents to get out of it? Repeatedly yelling, “BUT I’M NOT TIRED!!!”

Then you hit adulthood and all you can think of is that you really wish those childhood nap days you refused to take could have been accumulated like unused vacation days at work so you could have had rollover naps available to use as an adult!

After sitting in several meetings today I found myself in a meeting literally unable to keep my eyes open. I’m not just talking about feeling sleepy…I’m talking about literally being unable to keep your eyes open.  It was terrifying!  I was trying everything to keep my brain focused on the conversation but I could feel my eyes continuously rolling back in my head. I don’t know if it is jet lag or just being gone on trip after trip for the last two months, but today I knew I was going to be in real trouble if I didn’t find a way to take a nap.

What’s funny about that is that I literally NEVER take naps. Like NEVER! I cannot even tell you the last time I took a nap during the day with the only exception being a rare Sunday afternoon nap that I may take three or four times in a year. I just don’t do naps. Not because I don’t want to because I really wish I could but I am unable to take a power nap – when I take a nap I end up out for the count for hours and hours and by the time I wake up I am a groggy mess whose rest of the day is a total waste because I can’t get going again. Thus, I simply don’t do naps.

But today when I was literally falling asleep during a one on one conversation this afternoon I finally threw in the towel, drove home, and within seconds was asleep on the couch. In that moment it didn’t matter than I had crazy amounts to do. It didn’t matter that I had places I needed to be. I was done, checked out, down for the count, drooling on my pillow….okay I wasn’t really drooling but if I was a drooler I am fairly certain I would have been…

I suppose today the advice I took was from the great Charles M. Schulz in the book Charlie Brown’s Little Book of Wisdom:

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.”

Get some rest everyone! And try not to drool.

~Amy Rees Anderson