If your body doesn't get the rest it needs there's no way you can demand a lot out of it, no matter how hard you try. I learned that valuable lesson today. And I owe it to my very lovable, very cute, very annoying Black Lab, Alley, for teaching me this lesson.
Last night I crawled into bed, exhausted after a fairly productive day. My family unintentionally woke me up while they were calling for Alley to go outside before they also turned it in. I actually appreciated them going out of their way to do that. If she doesn't go outside before the house settles down she'll have to go in the middle of the night. I'm so fortunate as to be assigned the job of making sure she gets out late at night. She assigned me herself, of course. I thought, better I wake up now when I've only been sleeping for half an hour, then being pulled out of a deep sleep later.
Only last night she didn't want to go out when my famly, at first, gently told her to. Her
refusal brought my dad barging into my room, commanding voice and all, and ordering her to go. When my dad orders, you listen. Alley did step outside, but I doubt it was anything more than that. My mom told me this morning that Alley probably walked out a ways then turned right back around to be let in. Alley is one of the most stubborn dogs you'll ever meet, so I have reason to believe there's a good chance my mom is right.
Her waking me up around two in the morning is another good indicator. I groaned while pushing back the covers and dragging myself out of the comforts of bed.
Here's another annoying thing about Alley. When she goes out, she doesn't just do her business and come back in. No, she figures that when every thing's pitch black and the whole world's asleep is the perfect opportunity to sniff around and examine every inch of our decent-sized backyard. She could easily take twenty minutes, maybe more. She's not very considerate of her drowsy owner, who's at the moment anxiously thinking of sleep .
If I try calling her back in, and she's feeling agreeable, she turns to look at me. Then she continues with her investigation. Lately though she hasn't been feeling to agreeable, and she simply pauses a second without a glance back, most likely wondering why I have to be so annoying as the interrupt her important mission. I used to wait patiently for her. Now I feel the air with my hand, making sure it's not bitter cold, and go back to bed. As long as the temperature is bearable shouldn't she suffer the consequences of disturbing my peaceful slumber? So I did that last night. Falling back asleep was no problem because of how tired I already was.
Two hours passed, and I heard something. It was Alley, scratching the sliding glass door. She's never done that at night before, unless it wasn't loud enough for me to hear and I remained blissfully unaware. My super sensitive ears were the only ones in the house to pick up this scraping noise, forcing me out of sweet dreamland into realty. A reality where I wanted to shoot my dog. I let her back in, otherwise she would have continued scratching, which would have kept me up.
I got up at six-thirty and did my best to carry on normally. I was eating a healthy breakfast by seven-thirty and ready to dance a non-stop barre by eight. Before I began I felt tired, but I thought if I pushed through it I would feel better afterwards. I was wrong. My non-stop barre usually lasts for half an hour. Today, I had to stop after twenty minutes. What was discouraging about that, was the fact that just this last Monday I was able to go through thirty minutes strongly. For the past three weeks I've been doing a non-stop barre three days a week, and each time I've felt more capable. I was sure the result of all my hard work flew out the window.
At first I blamed myself. I wasn't tough enough, good enough, strong enough. But common sense kicked in and told me there was nothing I could have done differently without enough sleep. People who want a career in something physical need to take extra good care of their bodies, otherwise they won't work properly. My body lacked adequate rest, therefore no amount of will power was able to force it to do what I wanted.
I'll let today go. But you can bet that after I get a good nights sleep I'm going to come back seeking revenge on the non-stop barre.
No comments:
Post a Comment