First of all, I want to register a simultaneous apology and complaint:  My blog won’t post pictures today.  This has made me feel so defeated I think I’ll go back to bed.  Which leads me to today’s topic…

Something incredibly bizarre happened to me last night.I turned out the light at midnight, but didn’t fall asleep right away, because—this is the bizarre part—I wasn’t tired.

I didn’t know that was even possible.True, I was only really tired during one period of my life, but that period lasted from January of 1970 until this past June. By then I’d begun getting Messages From the Universe indicating that I’d spent enough time in a physical and mental fog.For example:

• Having heard that Thomas Edison relied on refreshing mini-naps, I started taking them regularly. While driving.
• I had elaborate, compulsive fantasies about sleeping with all the most beautiful people I know.None of these fantasies involved sex.
• My caffeine-related jitters were interfering with seismographic readings as far away as Bangladesh.
• I kept confusing Anne Coulter with Kim Jong-Il.
• I was legally required to change the eye-color listing on my driver’s license from “blue” to “red.”
• One night in a hotel room, judgment deeply impaired, I used the scissors from my travel sewing kit to give myself a haircut that was basically an Homage to Sheep Shearing.

Then an intuitive friend said something I thought was very profound:“What would you do if you knew that every good thing in your life depended on your getting enough rest? Because it does.”

At least I think that’s what she said. And I think it was my intuitive friend. It could have been the cashier at Target. Or Kim Jong-Il. It’s all sort of hazy.

Anyway, at that moment I made a radical decision: I would put sleep above all other priorities until I was no longer tired.Every night, I would sleep until I woke up. I would consume no stimulants, and I would go back to dreamland whenever I felt fatigued.

When I woke up six weeks later, the whole world seemed shiny and attractive, like Patrick Stewart’s head. I was filled with ideas. My eye-bags had shrunk to the point where they looked less like Hefty garbage disposal units than tasteful evening clutches. I felt an inner peace I thought came only from enlightenment or horse tranquilizers.

That was yesterday, and it was followed by the bizarre experience mentioned above: I just lay there, awake and perky, feeling the amazing sensation of not being tired, and vowing that somehow, I’d make the feeling last.

So I invite you to join me in something I’m calling the Adequate-Sleep Life-Enhancing Experimental Project (ASLEEP).The requirements for membership are simple: we sleep until we aren’t tired, whenver possible. And I mean WHENEVER POSSIBLE, as in, if you show up at your best friend’s wedding tired, you take a pillow and sleep through the ceremony. Better yet, don’t show. Man up. Stay in bed.

If you violate the project’s strict standards, the rest of us… won’t even know about it.We’re ASLEEP, remember?We don’t check up on our collaborators, evaluate performance, or do a damn thing with the data from our research.All we do is enjoy life a hell of a lot more than we did when we were always tired.Because every good thing really does depend on rest.Go get some.