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                                                                                      WELCOME  TO  MY  AUTHOR  PORTFOLIO

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Sleep, if you get the recommended seven to eight hours per twenty-four hour period, constitutes about 31% of a person’s life. If you live to the age of 80, you will have spent approximately twenty-five years of that time asleep. And nine years watching television. And three years eating. Two years in the car. One year sitting in waiting rooms or standing in line. And one year ridding your body of waste products. No wonder you don’t have much to show for it.

Without sleep, though, you would feel pretty awful. The AMA declares sleep to be a human right and sleep deprivation a form of torture. Luckily, scientists have carefully studied all aspects of sleeping, and made it so complicated that a person can actually become a sleep professional, and we’re not just talking about mattress testing, which, by the way, pays an average of $46,000 per year. You could even be a certified sleep science coach.

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Sleep is big business. There are sleep clinics, sleep monitors, sleep accessories. You can visit the Sleep Number Center and get your ideal sleep number calculated to reach the ideal level of firmness and angle for a perfect night’s sleep. Perfect is great, but what is considered normal sleep?

Napoleon reportedly had the ability to fall asleep almost instantly, and required only three to four hours with a few short naps later on. Not surprising since his name begins with nap. He once remarked in regards to sleep needs: "six hours for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool.” Albert Einstein, on the other hand, prioritized sleep, averaging ten hours a night. For the run-of-the-mill person, seven to eight should be sufficient.

There are four stages of sleep, helpfully numbered one through four: Stages one, two, and three are non-rapid eye movement sleep with the sleep in each stage deeper than the previous stage. And then one stage of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep when dreaming occurs. You might have thought, like I did, that REM, the rock band from Georgia named themselves after the dreaming stage of the sleep cycle, but according to one member of the band, REM stands for Robert Eugene Meatyard, a photographer who signed his prints r.e.m. Meatyard was an optician who was born in Normal, Illinois. Normal is the one place where, no matter how much sleep a person gets, it’s considered normal.

What’s not normal is sleep talking and especially sleepwalking—somnambulism. Which brings us to the incredible story of Lee Hadwin, the sleepwalking artist. Hadwin is, remarkably, unable to draw anything during waking hours, but produces highly detailed drawings while asleep that he has no recollection of doing. So, maybe, all that time you spend sleeping could be put to better use developing a hidden talent. Think about it.