I'd gone on Holiday by Mistake!

It would seem I have been on an unintentional sabbatical for the last 4 months or so. I would like to thank all of you who emailed, IM'd. sent LinkedIn  mail and contacted me via Facebook to ask where T6 had gone.  I appreciate the interest, concern and friendship you have shown me.

So, what happened? 

 In very simple terms I stopped sleeping. 

In the past I would have thought this was a dream come true, 'finally time to finish all those projects ! Yeah, not so much.  Around late June I began to wake every hour or hour and half and then up for the day with a jolt of my legs at 5am. No matter what time I would go to bed ,(and trust me I was often in bed by 8pm, just after my kids), within two hours the pattern would begin. shades of Groundhog day.  Coming from a background in event staging I was used to, hell I was proud of my ability to shrug off sleep with a glib " sleep give you cancer man, nobody wants cancer".   I have a personal best of 60 hours with no sleep on a Comdex show in Vegas. The Machismo associated with staging techs and the utter disregard for healthy sleeping patterns was just as important as your ability to perform with out missing a cue. 

After leaving the event staging life and getting a office job I still only slept on average 4 hours a night.  reading news aggregate, commenting on blogs, catching up with work issues and finally writing my own blog would fill the hours after my kids then wife would head to bed.  I would insist on getting up at 2 or 3am when one of the kids would get up.

Then I stopped sleeping.

The first month I was only mildly annoyed by the now  2 hours of real sleep.

The Second month I started to become a bit more testy to my co-workers but held it together, for the most part. 

The Third month I just ran on instinct and drive to get my day done and be a presence in my family's  life.

The fourth month was just running on empty and finally admitting that something was up.

In the long run my answer was not the Tylenol PM's nor any self medicating, it was a morning ritual of Yoga. yeah, yoga.

So, as T6 creaks back to life and I wipe the cobwebs away from the machinery and the little grey cells I ask for your suggestions and contributions.  Are you interested in becoming a guest writer for T6? If so i will send you a T6 Style sheet and method of submitting your articles. I intend to start off with two guests a week and see how it works.

I think withnail would agree - going on holiday by mistake is never a good idea. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L95MAROlcqg&feature=related

Comments

[John Huntington]

Welcome back! Glad you're feeling better...

[T6`]

Thanks! I am just now digging through the 4k of news articles stored in my google reader. If you do not hear from me by Friday, send a search party