I once had a perfect sleeping pattern of 7 to 9 hours straight at night, but at some point in my life, it broke.

I can’t tell if it was shifts, flexible work, heartbreak, trauma, late-night hangouts, fatherhood, or just plain old aging. I guess it is a mix of all these and many more.

As with most things, the breaking of the pattern is not as much a problem as what leaks out and what remains.

I use the time I wake up abruptly to doomscroll through social media, reinforcing the broken pattern and draining my energy. What’s worse, any shut-eye after doomscrolling locks in the energy drain. I wake up feeling like I got no sleep and just power through the day with brute discipline.

Then, I asked myself what I would be doing if I didn’t have social media at the times I wake up. Four things were distilled: pray, exercise, reflect, write. 

I have now been exploring only these four whenever I wake up abruptly.

There’s still the drain of a broken sleep pattern, but there’s now a refill from attending to different aspects of my being instead of keeping up with the distracted.

– Osasu Oviawe