Anyone who knows me knows that I am anything but an athlete. I am, however, an avid napper. So for this week’s Sport or Not, I wanted to combine these two aspects of my life and focus on an activity composed of enough high stakes, competitiveness and physical exhaustion to deserve recognition as its very own sport. This activity I’m describing? Taking a nap without setting an alarm.
For me, this is loaded with high stakes. If I start napping with no alarm to wake me up there is no telling when I’ll open my eyes again. This can cause a lot of problems. I’ve slept through deadlines and dinners, there have been times I’ve slept through entire classes and worst of all, sometimes I’ll sleep so long that not only did I completely waste any time I had to do things during the day, but then I’m up all night. In sports there are huge losses, and oftentimes just one long nap alone can cause a devastating effect to my sleep schedule.
That’s where the competition comes in. It’s really a matter of competing with yourself and your own internal clock. Can you trust yourself when you say you’re just closing your eyes? Or will you wake up three hours later with no idea what day it is? It’s also a competition with your own reason and logic. You know you should just set an alarm but you’re just too tired to bother — which is where the physical exhaustion aspect comes into play.
With napping without an alarm sharing so many characteristics of most widely accepted sports, who’s to say the former activity is not a sport in its own right?