It’s not (always) insomnia, it’s segmented sleep
⏳ It’s Thursday, and we’ve got just 3.46% of the year left to go!
Issue #232: a muster of peacocks + starting small
I don’t get enough sleep. I bet you don’t either. The NIH helpfully reminds us that lack of sleep is a problem, causing high blood pressure, stroke, obesity, lack of productivity and an increased likelihood of death. If you tend to jolt awake in the middle of the night (like I often do), thinking about these facts doesn’t exactly help you chill out. I was therefore thrilled to learn that there might be something off with the current prescription for seven hours of uninterrupted sleep.
As historian Robert Ekirch writes, sleeping for one uninterrupted interval is simply a function of artificial light and the industrial revolution. Before electricity and factories, segmented sleep — sleeping in two intervals — was all the rage. Benjamin Franklin was a fan: Between “first sleep” and “second sleep” he would get naked, throw open the windows and take cold air baths. The French called the period between the two sleeps “dorveille,” while the English called it “the watch.” Both terms sound ancient and spooky in a cool way, which made me search for other people who embrace this period of sleeplessness. On Medium, Ron Geraci describes this state as “an odd, placid form of being awake–more aware but less alert…a ripe sentience that allowed clear but limited thought and wanted stillness.”
Reading this helped me reframe what I previously defined as insomnia. Now, when I wake up in the middle of the night, instead of stressing out about NIH factoids, I remind myself I might be conscious in a way that is only available to me in that moment. I allow my mind to wander, to think in a way that still feels sort of like a dream. This has paid off: I have an army of Monarch butterflies in my garden because one night I decided the next day I was going to plant milkweed everywhere (just one example of my more recent dream-like decisions).
There doesn’t seem to be a scientific consensus about whether biphasic sleep is a good thing, but that’s okay. For me, the knowledge that there is more than one way of looking at periods of sleeplessness has made the NIH’s dire warnings less scary, and makes me want to give a shout out to the true sleep rebels, our beloved night owls. While they don’t necessarily have “two sleeps,” they do find themselves hyper-focused in the middle of the night. A self-described night owl, Stefanie Morejon, writes on Medium that her behavior is perhaps evolutionary, essential for human survival. “Somebody,” she writes, “had to stay awake to keep the fires burning, to protect the community and keep the night creatures at bay.”
🐦 Elsewhere on Medium…
A watch of nightingales. A muster of peacocks. A murder of crows. These delightfully unexpected collective nouns, or “terms of venery,” date back to a 1486 book about hunting. Most people don’t realize English contains collective nouns for groups of humans, too, e.g. “a promise of bartenders” and “a hastiness of cooks” (!). We really need to start coining more of these. A… draft of Medium writers? That’s not great. Someone should fix that. If you have ideas, let me know. (Jack Shepherd)
📖 Worth remembering
To tell a good story, start super small. (Katie E. Lawrence)
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb, Harris Sockel & Carly Rose Gillis
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