Day 15, L3: Too much sleep, Getxo mansions and Animes

- May 12, 2020

Well what a nonsense an early night is! For me, anyway.

I was finally Covid-tired and thought I'd have an early night for once last night. Turned the lights out around 10.15. Went straight to sleep. I can do that when I flick the sleep switch. So far so good.

Woke up feeling like I'd had a great sleep - but knowing it couldn't possibly be anywhere near morning.

I presumed it was somewhere around midnight. It was 11.45pm. Oh heavens. This was, for me, a good thing. Straight back to sleep for more heaven.

Woke up later with some good ideas floating in my mind, not sure if they came from dreams or thoughts during those earlier waking moments. What I do know is that ideas often come in the middle of the night - but if they can't be recalled in the morning, then they're redundant. I never write any midnight thoughts down, although I do try my best to capture those that have merit in my mind with some techniques I've learnt over the years. And if I can write them down in the morning, then indeed they have merit.

At this waking point I thought it was probably around 2am. And yes, it was. Normally I'm still up at that time!

So I still have many more hours of sleep to go till morning. Heavens above, this is great. I turn over, go straight back to sleep. I can do that. Easily. And with pure joy.

Woke up kinda properly at 7am; got up and peeped out at the sunrise sky. It was rather nice - but more sleep was better. I was feeling exhausted after all that sleep!

Back to bed for a short snooze - and I woke up again just after 8am feeling as tired as shit.

OMG. I love sleep better than just about everything else. But truly, so much of it is not good for me. Jeez, I could barely drag myself out of bed after all that sleep. Oh gosh.

It's definitely a case of quality not quantity for me when it comes to sleep.

I must qualify this with the fact I don't have to get up at some ungodly sparrow-fart hour to spruce myself up and trawl my way through traffic to an office. Otherwise I'd be in trouble!

I'm lucky to be able to simply walk across the hall to work. But as I say, often I don't leave that office until 2 or 3 in the morning, especially if I'm on a roll.

It's all about what works best for everyone.

Last night's early sleep fiasco confirms to me that I'm a night owl through and through.

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

God help everyone who has had to spend half their day commuting. It should not be allowed. Stagger those work hours, or let people work at home more. We now know this can work - but admittedly you do need staff you can trust 100% and a strategy to make this way of working work. Without that, you're probably doomed. But good staff + integrity + flexible working = productivity and joy beyond the norm.

As mentioned in an earlier post, flexible working can certainly work. I did it way back in the 1980s. Brilliant. Come on Auckland and NZ - sort it.

So today was a miserable one weather-wise. Windy, rainy, yuk. Never set foot outside.

I revamped my website and have worked hard on my local travel offering. Huge job. Complex. Still more work to do. I hope to be ready to spread the word very soon. Thought it might be today, but will share more tomorrow. It's an incredibly complicated business. And it's tangling my mind.

As I didn't get to the beach today (yuk weather), I'm going to share photos of a beach area near Bilbao called Getxo. It's an affluent area with many imposing mansions where the wealthy have holiday homes. It certainly has a very different vibe to that of Omaha or any New Zealand beach, more austere and, well, imposing. We had a meal at a cafe right on the beach, almost, but not quite on the sand. Wish NZ beaches had that sort of beachside offering.

People think Omaha has mansions - these things in Getxo make the Omaha mansions look like dolls houses!

Getxo, Spain - near Bilbao

These mansions were quite something

LUNCH: a salad with local smoked fish (it was a bit dry, sadly), slaw, rice, pickled onions, tomatoes, avocado and whatnot

DINNER: ravioli - kumara, leek and blue cheese

Weather - generally horrible. An inside day.

Did our weekly quiz tonight - didn't do well - but had lots of fun. I think I prefer it to actual pub quiz - dinner is better, wine is cheaper, you can wear what the hell you like and don't have to battle traffic or worry about sipping too much wine!

SHARE-NOTE OF THE DAY:

I don't really have anything much as I've been full on working on my website and travel itineraries etc I'm about to market.

But here are a couple of animes of me - from an app that creates these from real photos, which I've also shown here. Kinda fun. I look better as an anime! (Manga style cartoony thingy).