The Christmas Hangover

I woke up this morning after a remarkably good night's sleep. The family - both sides - was over for Christmas Dinner last night. The house was a bit of a disaster, and I had gone to bed without cleaning up much.

This morning I woke to the mess in the kitchen - the dirty dishes, the coffee cups, the wine glasses. There was wrapping paper everywhere, leftover party favourites from the Christmas crackers, dirty napkins All of it went into the garbage. And now we have a very large bag of junk that will be sent to a landfill. That junk must be generated at almost every house in North America. That's a lot of cheap Chinese crap going directly from the dining room to the dump.

And it got me to thinking...

People have ranted about the "commercialization of Christmas" for the past fifty years - I watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" from 1965 and Charlie Brown laments about it. But things haven't changed much. We still buy things we don't need. We still have an expectation that we should get a commensurate amount of stuff based loosely on how much we give. Folks like me say "I don't want anything" but would be disappointed Christmas morning if that was an actually reality.

So I hope I read this a year from now, and I hope that I've moved closer to this ideal.

We should give nothing except cheer and fellowship and good wishes. Maybe splurge on a meal - just to reinforce that we are rich.

What would it feel like to really have to suffer in order to give someone a gift. I don't know. And if you're reading this, I doubt you do either (you're reading this on a computer of some sort - so  you're rich).  How about this: we all agree that we forego Christmas stockings and presents under the tree, and make the holiday more like Thanksgiving. Be thankful that we're all winners in the gene-pool of life. We were born in North America. We speak English. Most of us are white anglo saxons. Do we have to flaunt it?

It has to stop some-place. How about next year?

Best Night Yet - But I Really Don't Know Why

When I woke up this morning I knew that I had the best night's sleep I've had in a long, long time. The problem is I don't think I did anything unusual yesterday - actually I went to bed earlier than normal - and this would usually cause me to sleep poorly. The only thing I did different yesterday was to listen to some meditation isochronic tones, as well as some insomnia ones, for about an hour - while doing something else (like writing or reading). I'll try to replicate the same behavior today and see if I get the same results tonight.

Resumes

My buddy Dave has thrown me some work to post four jobs on a couple of popular job search sites, and to filter and forward the resumes to him and his colleagues. It's mostly a clerical thing which doesn't involve much brain power, but I find myself frustrated by some simple resume writing tips that most people don't know about (or they do know about them, but they don't do them). So for my personal venting, I'm putting these very simple rules here for my own edification.

• Spell check. Everyone submits their resume online now, and every computer has a spell checker. Use it.
• Grammar check. Same as above. If you can't speak English, find someone who does and can proofread for you.
• Read the ad! If I put "please send your cover letter and resume as attachments to the email" I don't think that's too hard to understand. I'm cutting and pasting all over the place because 1 in 10 actually does this.
• When you are smart enough to attach documents, chances are you'll call them something like junecv-oct2009.doc. How about call it John Smith Resume.doc and John Smith Cover Letter.doc Better yet, send them both (with similar names) as PDF files so anyone can read them.
• I can't stand applicants that won't take an extra 45 seconds to write a cover letter. I'd even accept a cover email. Given my drothers, an application received without a cover document would be sent to the trash immediately (without opening). Note that I forward these on as "John Smith Resume - No Cover". 

Remember, the person reading your application has likely received hundreds. These days, they are rarely going to be printed off, so the name of your document (resume or cover letter) needs to describe what it is - and make it easy to find.

The job of a resume or an application is to get an interview. The easier you make it to read/find/file your application, the higher the likelihood you'll get a phonecall about the job.

My ideal resume would pass all the spell and grammar checks, would have an email cover letter, a copy of that same cover letter as an attachment and a resume as an attachment. The attachments would have clear names describing who and what they are - like my example above.

I've yet to receive one of these.

Fractured Sleep

I am really frustrated by this part of my ongoing struggle with sleep. Fractured or fragmented:

On average, I'm awake 13 times a night. I think the average is about 4.

The most obvious "advice" I hear is to not drink alcohol - because it causes fractured sleep.

But what if you don't drink?

Zeo gives me insight - some good, some not so good

I got a Zeo Sleep Monitor a few weeks ago.

The idea is to gather actual data about your sleep - like that you'd get in a sleep lab. You wear a headband at night that monitors your brain patterns and transmits what it tracks onto your Smartphone (it could be an iPhone, but I have the Android version). The software ap on the Smartphone then transmits this data back to a website that Zeo has for users. The Zeo site has all kinds of tools to manipulate the data, and you can experiment to see what actually has an effect on your light, deep and REM sleep - as well as how often and how long you are awake each night.

And therein lies my dilemma.

My ZQ Last Night = 45 (red-awake, green-REM, grey-light, black-deep)

An average 50-60 year old man should have a "ZQ" (the calculation that Zeo makes on your sleep based on all the time you spent in each phase) of 69. For the first week of use, my ZQ was actually hovering in the low 70's - which provided a kind of psychological boost. Then the last few nights it's been in the 40's. As you can see in the chart that Zeo collected - it's very fractured (note that even the 77 score I got last week was full of fractured sleep - see below).

And that's the problem - I'm doing nothing different. I have a routine that generally lets me sleep relatively well. I know if I don't exercise or watch TV too late - I'll pay. So I avoid doing anything that might upset sleep.

Fortunately there's a coaching service with Zeo, and I don't think I'm the only one with this problem. We'll see...