Since the beginning of time everyone has been eating and sleeping — a lot. If you thought this meant there couldn’t be any new and cool twists on these activities, you’d be wrong.
1. Eating. “Last night I tried to “race myself” because I knew I would get full fairly quickly but I really enjoyed what I was eating so I ate fast.” This is from the SLD forums. Outcome of race: Lost. “I still couldn’t get through the whole salad, just too full to eat another bite. That’s amazing to me.”
2. Sleeping. Someone I know used to wake himself up in the middle of the night because he enjoyed falling asleep.
Being woken up just to enjoy falling alseep again is not a completely new twist:
“Others feel the pleasure of content and prosperity; I feel it too, as well as they, but not as it slides and passes by; one should study, taste, and ruminate upon it, to render condign thanks to Him who grants it to us. They enjoy the other pleasures as they do that of sleep, without knowing it. To the end that even sleep itself should not so stupidly escape from me, I have formerly caused myself to be disturbed in my sleep, so that I might the better and more sensibly relish and taste it.”
– Of Experience, Michel de Montaigne, 1580.
(full text at https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/montaigne/montaigne-essays-8.html)
Michel de Montaigne used to wake himself up so he could fall asleep again at night, for the same reason, enjoyment of falling asleep.
His writings, what I’ve heard of them, seem not so much self-experimentation as recollecting of data from experience and theorizing, which is very similar. It seems more appreciated, perhaps, than self experimentation, though I’m not sure why.
When in December 2003, I changed from going to bed around 3 a.m to around 11:30-12 (following Seth’s counsel), and also began religiously getting sunlight early in the day, not only did I undergo a powerful positive shift in baseline mood, with behavioral consequences, but I also experienced sleep, especially going to sleep, much differently. It became more pleasureable. I began to look forward to the relaxation that came as it got dark and my body began to shut down. And getting into bed to read and then sleep, my body would have this warm, relaxed quality that I basked in.
I said to friends that I no longer fell asleep but went to sleep. Previously for many years, I just stayed up into the night, and when sleep overtook me, I fell asleep. After going to bed early, I would know when my body was ready to sleep and take pleasure in it and prepare for it. It felt like something my body and I were doing together.
I assume that changing my circadian rhythms increased wave amplitude, so I was more awake when I was awake, and more asleep when I was asleep, and it felt — and still feels good…
There is a sweetness and honesty to Montaigne’s writings that make them very charming….
in college I knew a guy who didn’t drink or do drugs. But he stayed up far past his bedtime once and was overwhelmed with excitement at feeling a little punchy because of it.