As I slump wearily over my living room table, clutching my third cup of coffee and feeling distinctly nauseous and fuzzy-headed due to the lack of sleep I am suffering from — I got “just” six-and-a-half-hours last night — I am pondering a particular breed of pest that my life seems to be filled with: the smug sleeper.These are the people who seem to be able to survive — thrive, even — on precious little sleep; the people who don’t seem to find exhaustion an endlessly interesting and relatable conversation topic; people for whom mornings are apparently just as energising and joyful as any other part of the day (see also smug early risers). I resent these people. If they’re not making me feel bad for being so slothful, they’re tempting me into late-night escapades when I know I have to get up early the next day. Unlike them, I am guaranteed to wake up feeling hideous.
But alas, I know many such types. There’s the colleague who writes witty newsletters every night at 2am, dozes off within “a couple of minutes”, sets his alarm for 8am and arrives in the office positively brimming with beans. There’s the new-mother fashion CEO friend who’s never out of the pages of Vogue and has the most active social life I know, on four hours’ sleep a night, maximum. And then there’s the Cambridge academic father of another friend who, during a meditation, asked God to grant him the miracle of needing less than the seven-to-eight hours of sleep he had been getting up until then. He has leapt happily out of bed after six hours’ sleep ever since (true story).
I am not of this ilk. In an ideal world, I would be a nine-hours-a-night kind of gal, possibly even nine-and-a-half. Come the weekend, if I am underslept, as I often am, I have been known to sleep in for teenagerish amounts of time (one recent and lovely slumber lasted over 12 hours). Am I doing something wrong? Should I feel ashamed? Should I, too, be asking for divine intervention, or at least be trying to train myself to sleep less?