Naps R Good

I think if you want to live a long life you really need to take naps. My parents are huge endorsers of naps. It recharges your brain from the morning or night. I think more important if you have a night schedule. I use to have something of a night schedule. Started at 4 P.M. and didn’t get out until 1A.M. I find it odd now that I was able to sustain that. It did buffer the shift a lot easier knowing I had a bottle of scotch waiting for me when I did get home. Drinking did make the day go by faster.

My folks would always shut down the restaurant after the lunch break. Somewhere around 3:30 P.M. Kinda’ sucked for people who wanted their food at a certain time. They could always hit the fast food Chinese restaurant place next door, if they were desperate for it. Yes, my folks opened up a restaurant next to another Chinese restaurant. In today’s business this would be death. Back in the 80’s, no one cared. There weren’t that many Chinese places anyway.

When they shut down, they were closed. Phone off the hook, and just silence, up until dinner time. I wager they saved themselves a TON of stress issues not having to drive back and forth from the restaurant (although we only lived a mile and a half from work). It was really convenient. I didn’t realize how efficient this set up was until I had to commute in L.A. traffic from the San Fernando Valley to Santa Monica (23 miles). The wear and tear on your car too. At the previous schedule I had, I usually went to the beach and read a book or took a nap before going into work. So in that sense, it worked out really well. Wake up, went to the gym and just hung out at Will Rogers beach until I had to get to work. I didn’t know it then, but this was pretty much how my folks functioned throughout their life. Just easy with the siestas. I think most Americans lead a stressful on-call life. We seem to be so paranoid that a phone will ring and we won’t be there to answer it. Or that we are required to check in with the office. I mean, the more successful you get, the more indispensible you become. And you are constantly fighting your time. As I’ve said in the past, time is a commodity that we fully own. It would suck to realize other people have control of it.