I think Pope said that--I’ll check…

Nope.

The saying comes from Night Thoughts (1742–5) by the English poet and dramatist Edward Young (1683–1765). The 10,000 line poem is entitled “The Complaint: or Night-Thoughts on LIfe, Death, & Immortality”, more simply known as “Night Thoughts”.

Well—learn something every day.

There are lots of similar adages, with reasons for it and essays on how to combat the habit, but none of them mention sleep procrastination. Still, I don’t think it’s a new trend, just an old one with a new name. When I was reading women’s diaries for my book (Reading Between the Lines: The Diaries of Women, Key Porter Books, 1995), I came across a woman after my own habit….

AND THIS IS THE REASON my Blog takes so long. It’s hours later. I know the title of the book (an anthology) my quarry is in, and the editor, and I’ve found my own book on women’s diaries and I’ve enjoyed re-reading it. But that takes time! I claim the time in the name of research, not procrasti-nuttiness.

I’ll have to wing it. The woman, whose name will eventually surface, was a part-time diarist; she began her journal addressing it to her not-yet-existent daughter. She did eventually have a girl (in her forties, I remember). What I read was just an excerpt from an excerpt, but this is what I noted: She was bad at transitions. She couldn’t let go. She was too tired and she wanted to go to bed, but she was trapped in that moment. Does that sound familiar? Well, I think that was sleep procrastination.

And I am guilty of that right now so I’m leaving. It’s past my nap-time.

I think I suffer from Blog Procrastination.

Old habit/problem, new title.

An article in the Manchester Guardian this morning identifies my (yours too?) bad habit of delaying my (your) bedtime with non-essential Me-Time. Any mother will recognize this, without the title. She is at the family’s beck and call, doing most of the housework (“shit-work” Gloria Steinem used to call it), solving everyone’s problems, including her husband’s. Is it worse or better now when, if she’s lucky, she still has her day job which she has to do at home, or if she has lost it and has nothing else (oh , yeah?) to do all day. The calls aren’t so bad but the becks are tough. By the end of the day when respite is in sight, i.e. everyone has stopped becking and most of them are asleep, time alone and time to be free is more appealing than sleep or sex, until morning when it’s time to get up. Then you wonder why you watched another Netflix episode or another Dr Ho ad or put off brushing teeth and hair.

Now it’s called “sleep procrastination” and it’s bad for our health.

Anon, anon. (Anon means wait for me while I procrastinate.)