This Just In – Sleep deprivation is as dangerous to your ability to drive as is any other form of impairment, but it’s underestimated by many of us … trying to power through a difficult time.
I occasionally have a night – an entire night – when the sandman never comes. I look over at my clock and it says it’s 6:30 am … just about time to get up. I may have slipped in an hour here or there, but not a night’s sleep.
It’s easy for me to notice the effects the next day. Coffee by the gallon doesn’t really help. Being jittery isn’t the same as being fully AWAKE. My concentration is poor. I find myself walking from one room to another and realizing that I have no idea what I started out to accomplish. Maybe when I get to the bedroom, I’ll see something that will trigger my memory. (You’d think my awaiting bed would be it, but no …)
In times of great stress, this can be even more pronounced. This summer, my husband was hospitalized for some scary stuff (he’s ok now). I often stayed overnight in the hospital, “sleeping” in a chair, but some nights I simply had to come home to get real sleep. One of my dearest friends from childhood reinforced this for me, saying “you can’t pour from an empty bucket.” Thank you again, Liz.
That’s true for the work of providing family support and many other areas of work that we all engage in. Grocery shopping, doing laundry and preparing food – using a knife. Yikes.
Even more basic … pumping blood throughout your body. At a recent visit, our family cardiologist told us that sleep apnea – sends a lot of people into his office.
You should get good quality sleep for 6-8 hours each night, a third of your day, when your body is fully at rest. That includes the hardest working muscle you have – your heart. If you don’t get that rest, your heart will struggle to keep up. If this is a regular problem, disastrous and life-threatening events are almost inevitable.
This may surprise you, but that brings me to … Donald Trump. This week the DC gag order was re-imposed and the New York civil case that will prove once and for all that Trump isn’t (and never was) a billionaire is coming to its expected conclusion.
During a 24-hour period, Trump posted 75 times to his social media platform – repeated angry screeds attacking judges and witnesses in the cases scattered across four jurisdictions. There was only one three-hour block during which he wasn’t cranking out his anger and frustration.
In his few campaign appearances, he made repeated errors about running against Obama, greeted a Sioux City, Iowa crowd referring to them (twice) as “Sioux Falls” (that’s South Dakota), referred to Hamas as “hummus” and went off-script rambling about windmills and promising revenge and the end of democracy.
In any other circumstance, a person’s family might step in, take his phone away and reduce the caffeine intake to make this guy get some sleep. For a whole raft of reasons, it does seem like the only entity that can intervene now is the judicial system.
That’s what can be done about him personally. About the larger umbrella of conduct that he foments, there is one thing that all of us can do to push back – hard. We can get out and VOTE in big numbers to drive the point home that for all the sand thrown into the umpire’s face, we’re still at bat for democracy.
A small-town version of MAGA tactics and strategy is at work in Chapel Hill in the form of at least one CHALT activist harassing a volunteer writer for a local civics blog. As CHALT has offered no form of apology, I hope the election results send a strong message of rejection for such nonsense.
“Small-town” doesn’t have to mean “small-minded.”
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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