Sleep

    I used to have a lot of trouble getting enough sleep. Now that I am not working at a regular job and I have exhausted all the "solutions" that medical science has to offer, it is not such a problem. Nowadays I go to bed around 1AM, sleep for 3 or 4 hours, get up for 2 or 3 hours, then go back to sleep for another 3 hours or so. This gets me up in time for lunch. I have a couple of hours in the afternoon when I can get something done and then it's time for my afternoon nap. Around about 5PM I awake refreshed and ready to go. Great. Most useful businesses have closed up for the day, and in a couple of hours my wife, who gets up at O-dark-thirty every morning, is going to bed, so no more blacksmithing (hammer & tongs) or rock-and-roll blasting in the garage.
    Not worrying about getting enough sleep has improved my outlook considerably. I tell my family I am on a mariner's schedule now: 4 hours on, and then 4 hours off. I am not sure how they actually work it in the navy, but in the Patrick O'Brian stories a watch is always 4 hours.
     A couple of weeks ago I came across Up All Night, a story by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker. She talks about Nathaniel Kleitman, the father of sleep science, and Ben Franklin, one of our founding insomniacs. It's an enjoyable read.