In college, I used to stay up late with my friends playing video games. Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye, and Halo. You need all four players for a great game. Of course we wanted to maximize the fun factor, but we were in college and also had to pay at least attention to, you know, our education. So we had a rule that determined when we would stop playing: whoever had the soonest test, the soonest due paper, or earliest morning class, got to decide. It worked well, but it made us all tired.
Which brings us to our second, dumb, only-in-college rule (which at the time I think we called a philosophy): energy is energy. Meaning, both food and sleep give you energy, so if you can’t sleep, eat. We would munch on snacks while we played, keeping us awake.
Fast forward to the present. I’m on a diet. Go figure. It’s the first one of my life. Hopefully the last. It sucks, but I did this to myself, so I’m trying not to complain about it. (Although a coworker pointed out that part of being on a diet is getting to talk about it. Not sure where I fall on that one.)
Anyway, I had a very hungry moment last night before bed, and ended up going to bed exhausted. But I realized that old philosophy might be true after all: energy is energy. And it’s time to reverse it. Now that I can’t eat, I must sleep.