It’s Sunday and I am facing hours of obligations. I dither about, rearranging stacks of paper and pouring another glass of water because my previous glass of water is no longer cold enough. After approximately 20 minutes of relatively useless activity, I sit down at my computer, ready to start eliminating items from my To-Do list.

And then it hits me. I am tired. I cannot possibly be productive if I am the least bit tired,
I think. I ought to take a nap.

Naps are one of my all-time favorite activities. It is an equal opportunity activity: everyone can participate, whether old or young, large or small. Naps are infinitely customizable, coming in all shapes and sizes, and serving myriad purposes.

In an effort to promote one of my favorite diversions past-times, below is a list of some of the countless variations of naps that I have personally experienced. This list is not meant to be exhaustive (although that might help promote my cause), or the last word on napping, but instead, I hope that perhaps one of these might inspire you to nod off, catch a few winks, snooze, rest your eyes, visit the land of nod, count a few sheep (but not too many), take a siesta, catnap or grab a book, close your eyes and pretend to read.

1. The 20 Minute Power Nap

I start with the 20 Minute Power Nap because it’s my least favorite of all napping varieties. It tends to leave me frustrated and unrested — the complete opposite outcome of a good nap! I just can’t wrap my head around why I would possibly want to take a nap for less than half an hour. I’m getting worked up just thinking about this. 20-minute naps are great in theory, but no one will be able to convince me of their usefulness. If I only have 20 minutes, I’ll drink a coffee. I’m moving on.

2. The 60 Minute Standard

The 60 Minute Standard is the pepperoni pizza of naps, the cheeseburger of naps, the US Postal Service of naps. There is nothing flashy about it, but it always delivers. I always awake from an hour nap refreshed, rested and with a much better outlook on life. That To-Do list? Still there! But it’ll get done. Or not! The hour nap delivers just enough glorious unconscious me-time that everything in the world becomes possible. Or, as in the case of solving world hunger or deciding on the appropriate Christmas present for my parents, at least I have a more balanced perspective on the whole ordeal.

3. The “It’s Cold/Rainy/Snowy Outside And All I Want To Do Is Stay Inside” Nap

This nap is one of my personal favorites, especially because it is typically unplanned. On days that prompt the ICRSOAAIWTDISI Nap, I usually start with the good intentions of “reading a book” or “watching a movie” or “playing hide and go seek and deciding to hide under the covers of my bed,” but all of these lofty goals always end up the same. These naps also have some of the most varied and interesting locations because you tend to drop-off in unplanned locations such as at a desk, in a chair or on the floor.

4. The “I’m In A Beam of Sunlight And All Is Right With The World” Nap

Taking a page from dogs and cats everywhere, sometimes a spot of sunlight emits such strong nap pheromones that I have been known to literally collapse. Sunbeams make great napping locations, especially when accompanied by a pillow and really thick carpet.

5. The “Two Hours or Over, I Need to Recover From My Nap With Another Nap” Nap

This is my all time favorite type of nap. Ideally this nap combines elements from some of the other naps; maybe you find a spot of sunshine, maybe the weather is really gross. Whatever the reason, this nap is all business. With a minimum duration of two hours, you are seriously risking altering your nightly sleep-cycle, so the meek need not apply. You know you have accomplished this nap variation when you wake up, have no idea when, where or who you are, and can only manage enough energy to move to another potential nap location.

Regardless of the location and duration, naps are easily one of my Top Five Favorite Activities. Life is a little sweeter with a nap and I am a little bit nicer with a nap. My opinion: We made a big mistake at the beginning of Kindergarten. Nap time should be a daily occurrence.

I think that everyone gets discontent. It is one of the by-products of the human condition, along with the desire to eat foods that are bad for you and liking fire. There is some primordial, written-in-our-DNA kind of urge that makes us and Caveman Cog get dissatisfied with our current environment, our current interactions, our current self. I think that is what really spawned the wheel — some person with a serious case of discontent, manifested in wanderlust.

See, I need to feel like I am living my life, instead of my life controlling me. I need to feel like my choices actually do something, that they have the power to affect and improve my life experience. When I begin to feel like I am no longer running things, I do the only thing that emphatically proves that my choices have repercussions: I sabotage. Myself.

Example: My first year of teaching.

During my first year of teaching I worked a lot. I was lesson planning and giving tutorials and going to meetings and rewriting lessons and going to professional development and meeting with other teachers and observing and reflecting on my practice. I was working so much that it seemed that Jacob Blair, the Jacob Blair that likes to run or play or talk to friends or learn or grow was dead, and had been replaced with Jacob Blair the Work Robot. So I rebelled. I actively sabotaged my ability to work. I came home from work like normal, changed like normal, snacked like normal, but instead of working, I opened a book. I then read my book. Until 3 am. I did this for three days in a row. On the fourth day I was so brain dead that I actually was like a robot, and I had no choice but to come home and sleep, but I had accomplished my goal — I proved to myself that I was still in control.

These episodes also came in smaller doses: a day here and a day there of purposefully ruining my ability to meet my responsibilities. Whenever life starts to cease the reins from me, my response seems to be to quit. And while I found those days to be immensely satisfying in terms of my feelings of control, what I am beginning to discover is that they never left me in a better place. I would have renewed feelings of efficacy, but I would still have the same daunting responsibilities with even less time to meet them.

This week I have been having another extended sabotaging session. I slept instead of worked. I took naps after school. I went climbing at odd hours. I read blogs. I basically did what I wanted and pretended I had no responsibilities. Each morning I would wake up in a panic, because the reality of responsibility was back, and it had a smiling teenage face that was supposed to learn math. I had the same due dates and times, only now I was operating on less sleep and less preparation.

Normally, the cycle ends when I am so exhausted that I reach some sort of equilibrium, but this time something different happened. A conversation.

Me: “So, I need to tell you, just so you know, that I sabotage myself”

My Boss: “What?”

I explain.

My Boss: “Oh. Yea, I do that too, except instead of going and doing nothing, I work like crazy, but it is not effective because I am unhappy and ultimately we only work well when we are happy, so all my work sucks.”

I laughed. I felt better. Someone else acted irrationally when they were pushed to the brink and felt like they were no longer living their own life. Our thoughts were not identical, nor our reactions, but the discontent was the same, and that was significant.

The cycle ended today without a giant, exhausted collapse. Instead it ended with a “Me too.”

I have never been accused of being “cheap” per se. I do buy nice things. Things that will last. It just makes more sense to me to buy one thing that lasts a long time instead of buying the same low-quality item over and over again. While this is true, I definitely try to cut costs when I can. I tend to wait a long time on every single purchase. My Amazon cart is full of 35 such items, items that I just don’t know if I really want yet.

A couple weeks ago I attended the wedding of my friends Adam and Emily. I am not sure exactly when the splitting of a hotel room becomes socially unacceptable, but for the wedding I split a room for the weekend with three other people. Why spend 230 if I can knock it down to 57.5? I thought. This line of thinking was not born out of cheapness – I just thought I could get 173 dollars worth of enjoyment in other ways. What I failed to include in my calculations was the pleasure I find in being able to breathe.

One of the balancing acts of sharing living space is the use of the bathroom. The normal constraints all apply — we all need to shower regularly, we all need to dispose of bodily waste in a hygienic manner, we all need to spend hours fixing our hair. With a hotel however, these normal uses behave like they are on HGH; we all feel extra dirty from travel, we spend little time at the hotel so bathroom usage is concentrated and finally, all of our normal routines are upset; we eat different foods, we are stressed from being in different surroundings and our GI track responds accordingly.

So on this recent trip, splitting a room with 3 other adults created quite the delicate situation. There were two males and two females. Apparently, the two females smelled of roses every day of their lives, while at least one of the males pretty much farted constantly (Note: I was not the constant farter, although I definitely contributed occasionally on that front.). I was intimidated into pooping down stairs, in the main floor bathroom, so as not to offend the sensitive olfactory senses of the ladies. This made my tragedy all the more lamentable — it need not have happened.

On the final morning, we went about our normal procedures — girls in the shower, followed by breakfast. We returned to the room and I immediately hopped into the shower. I shampooed my hair and moved on to my arms and chest when I heard the door open. I paused mid-lather, in confusion.

“Hello?”

Laughter answered. Male laughter.

Matt.

Matt, who had broken wind, and my nostrils, countless times already that weekend.

“I have to poop man!” He tried to defend himself.

“Whatever! The steam will intensify it! This room is tiny!” I screamed in frustration. I was naked after all, so my options for defense were rather limited. I began throwing water over the shower curtain.

More laughter.

He flushed.

“Sorry man! I had to go!”

I finished my shower.

I opened the curtains. A soup like mixture of steam, dove body wash and foul human excrement met me. It enveloped me and penetrated, coating nose, mouth, lungs.

I gagged.

My stomach churned.

I grabbed two towels and dashed out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind me.

My dripping, naked body was greeted by the intense laughter of my three hotelmates. Pleas of innocence fell soundless on my ears. There was simply no way that The Farter would even attempt that stunt without the encouragement of my other two “friends”.

After toweling off and dressing in the hallway, I walked over to look at my 3 ex-friends.

“Well. That was horrible.” I deadpanned. “And I hate you.”

“But it could have been worse. He could have poked his ass past the shower curtains and deuced in the tub.”

I have never been much of a coffee drinker. My mom drank coffee every morning of my life, usually filling a head-sized mug with scalding water and huge scoops of Folgers Instant Coffee. She would always top off her mug with milk, turning the coffee into a soft caramel color. She drank this combination with trembling lips, afraid of the temperature, and then she would sweat from the heat.

I never understood this morning ritual. If the drink is so hot that your lip trembles and you sweat from drinking it, how is that enjoyable again?

Occasionally, I would make a child-friendly cup of coffee. This would consist of the same hot water, but it would substitute Swiss Miss hot chocolate for almost all of the Folgers. This mixture barely counted as a coffee-like substance as it only had the faintest coffee taste or smell.

My pseudo-instant-mocha-latte did not occur very often because hot chocolate tasted so much better.

When I moved to Houston I discovered the most amazing of grocery stores – Central Market. Central Market wowed me on every level, but the sample stations were especially impressive. From sampling hot fudge on vanilla ice cream, to brownies, to the ever-present bread and butter samples, the Central Market samples always delivered. These samples always included coffee.

I am not the type of person to pass up a free sample, so on every trip to Central Market I would fill two-inch cups with the following:

Salvadorean Free Trade
French Dark Roast
Central Market Breakfast Blend

These small cups slowly opened my taste buds to a coffee world that was much larger than Folger’s Instant Coffee.

I finished the transition to coffee-enjoyer in Spain. Every bar, every restaurant, every hostel offered Café con Leche. And it was awesome.

It did not matter whether I was in a large city of 100,000 people or a town of 50, the coffee was excellent. Every day I would hit up the local café to order a coffee and a chocolate croissant around 8 am. Every day I would people watch as I sipped my coffee. Every day I thoroughly enjoyed that coffee. It just made the morning so much better.

Looking back, I agree with the general premise of Folger’s advertisements; the best part of waking up was indeed the coffee I had in my cup. But while I will take the general premise, I think the specifics are simply wrong – Folgers was just bad.

I

You would think that if there was anyone in the world who would truly have my best interests in mind, it would be me. I’ve lived with me for 26 years. I’ve put up with my whining, my crying, my cheering, my boasting and my self-loathing. I’ve seen what I am capable of firsthand.

I know what I like.

I like to move — to run, to jump, to throw a disc, to climb, to swim, to bike, to hike.

I like to cook — to feed myself and others, to provide, to create, to savor, to indulge.

I like to read and think and write.

I like routine, knowing when I am going and where I am going.

But I also like an immense amount of flexibility; I’ll get where I am going when I am going to get there.

What is interesting, though, is that, despite all of my time spent with myself, I so frequently do things that are not in my best interest.

I scheduled a physical for Tuesday. I took a personal day off from work. At the doctor’s office, which was slightly too cold and made my hands clammy, I ran through the normal gamut of questions and breathing/coughing exercises. I moved into the blood-sample room.

I remember getting shots as a child. The doctor always said “Look away. I’ll tell you when I am done.” For 26 years I have devoutly followed those instructions. On Tuesday, I decided that “Dangit all, I am a grown man! 26 years old! It’s time!” So I watched. And I passed out.

Not only did I pass out, I passed out in spectacular, “I have never seen anyone sweat so much” fashion.

I made it through the needle process. I made it through vial one, vial two and vial three. The technician took off the rubber band on my arm. He took out the needle. He walked across the room to label my samples.

Then my vision returned and I was looking at my knees from a distance of 4 inches. The technician was saying some sort of soothing words I cannot recall. He was holding my shoulders. He lifted me up. I faded to black again.

Then my vision returned on his face. “You are burning up,” he said. Somehow he made that soothing too. He transferred me to a rolling chair. He wheeled me across the hall to a normal appointment room and put me up on the table. I started breathing in a slow forced manner as he put ice bags on my chest and head.

My fingers began to tense up. They began to tingle. I began to lose the ability to move them. The tense tingle sensation spread. To my arms. My legs. My entire lower-half. My abdomen. My tongue.

A doctor came in. She told me “You are going to have to calm down.” That was soothing too. I started breathing normally, and explained through slurred words that “my body is all tight.”

Twenty minutes passed. My body was back to normal, except for dizziness and a general clammy feeling. The doctor said my blood-sugar level was 20. Apparently that is low. She made me drink a super-sugar orange juice thing. She gave me some crackers. They had peanut butter and honey on them.

Eventually my buddy Adam picked me up. We ate a burrito at Freebirds and then saw X-Men: Origins. I felt fine.

Because I felt fine, I wanted to go climb. My roommate looked at me like I was crazy. My friend looked at me like I was crazy. My girlfriend got angry. I didn’t climb.

The point might be that I am an idiot, and I don’t actually know what is best for me. The point might be that soothing words can be pretty helpful. The point might be that I should never watch blood being drawn again.

Or, the point might be that I am lucky that I have friends who can and will tell me when I am being unreasonable. Even more than that, they will give me time and put up with me while I am being unreasonable, sticking with me until I realize it.

Two years ago, I was ordering a coloring book or something from Amazon.com when I noticed that I could get free two-day shipping if I tried out something called “Amazon Prime.” It was one of those “Try it for 30 days. Risk free!” sort of deals. If you wanted to cancel, you just had to click a button somewhere before 30 days elapsed. If you liked the service, or if you forgot to click the button, you were billed $70 for a year’s worth of “free” two-day shipping. I signed up for the free trial, like a sucker, and then forgot to click the button. I made the most of my mistake and proceeded to use Amazon Prime with gusto. This year I purposefully renewed my subscription.

During the past two years, Amazon Prime has become a staple of my day-to-day life. When my roommates run out of Crystal Lite, instead of writing it on the grocery list, I check out Amazon Prime. When my favorite mechanical pencil broke, the one I used for a four-year engineering degree and a year of teaching, I didn’t go to Office Max or Office Depot or Target. I went to Amazon Prime. When I wanted a digital projector for my classroom, I researched on Cnet.com and then purchased through… Amazon Prime.

The two-day shipping is just so convenient. I order printer refills, T-shirts, movies and, of course, books and they all arrive on my doorsteps two days later. Days that I come home to find those brown boxes with the distinctive Amazon smile logo on the sides are like miniature Christmas Days — my dull gray door does not have the sparkle of a traditional Christmas tree, but it has just as much space underneath its boughs, er… on the steps.

So when it came time for real Christmas shopping, I naturally turned to Amazon Prime and its glorious two-day shipping. I found great deals on board games and books, snacks and movies, shirts and video games. I completed all of my shopping in about two hours. I never had to face Christmas crowds, and I never had to go to the mall. I never even left my house.

While I love, appreciate, embrace, applaud, encourage, laud and enjoy the use of Amazon Prime, I can’t help but question the changes it is orchestrating in me. I had zero interactions with any of the sellers, shippers, packagers, distributors, manufacturers, designers or resource suppliers who took part in the arrival of my Christmas gifts at my door. I had no ownership of the creation of these products and, as a result, felt no responsibility… for safe creation or disposal. Amazon Prime allowed me to consume without thought or reflection.

Some questions that I didn’t ask include: Was the cardboard for my brother’s board game created by child labor? Was it pressed in a plant with adequate ventilation for its workers? Does the plant use toxic chemicals in the paints or the presses? Does it use local water sources to cool machines?

I did not ask these questions because I was blissfully focused on consuming. Amazon Prime has helped me to make consumption completely ordinary, completely expected. It is as if all the things my heart might momentarily desire just magically appear on my doorstep. All I have to do is say that I want them.

I am extremely thankful that Amazon Prime exists, and that I am in a financial position that I can give gifts to people I love. I am grateful that I did not have to travel to the Galleria to shop for gifts. But I want the things I do to have purpose and thought behind them. Just because it is easy for me does not mean it is the best thing in general.

So next year, I am going to think very hard about renewing my Amazon Prime subscription. When I eventually decide to renew it, which I will, I will challenge myself to reflect on whether I actually need the things I am ordering. I will think long and hard about where the things came from, and what my purchase does to support or crush the lives of other people.

I will use the answer to dictate my purchase, taking a small amount of comfort in the fact that my buying habits will help to spur change in the products offered on Amazon. So while I hope that a lot changes in my relationship with Amazon Prime during this next year, one thing will not - I will still smile and skip when I see that smiling box waiting on my doorstep.