Quarantine is a series of highly-strategic naps

In between making meals and washing ten-thousand dishes, may I suggest a new hobby for your quarantine? Recreational Napping.

Internet influencers tell us to “use this time to sharpen new skills,” learn a new hobby, become fluent in a foreign language. I say: bone up on your sleeping skills. Sharpen your saw for sawing zzz’s. Sleeping is an excellent pastime.

If you’re diligent, quarantine can become a series of highly-strategic naps. You’re not a person anymore; you’re a bear in hibernation. It’s pandemic-y outside and nobody wants you out there anyway. So, let yourself nap.

If you do this right, you’ll be able to take a morning, mid-day and afternoon nap. Maybe even a pre-bedtime doze. And don’t forget the snack nap: a nap after a snack. Lastly, for those moments when you’ve just HAD IT with the pandemic, let yourself take the I Just Don’t Want To Be Here Anymore Nap, which can be taken any time of day.

Your goal is to sleep as much as possible but not to sleep so much that it interferes with your night sleep. Afterall, the night sleep is the longest and (if you’re lucky) best sleep. It’s the sleep of pure, sweet oblivion. It’s the sleep that says: you made it through another terrible day of this godforsaken pandemic and now you are rewarded with eight to nine hours of beautiful nothingness. But again: you don’t want the daytime napping to interfere with the night sleep. Protect and preserve the night-time sleep. Remember this! The beautiful nothingness is simply too precious. So, be strategic.

Try to stuff in as much sleep as possible before 1pm. Get back in bed after breakfast. Put a pillow over your head. Turn on a boring podcast. Let yourself sink into whatever comes. Hopefully sleep is what comes but if not sleep, at least a sort of fugue state where time is irrelevant.

Take a nap after lunch. Make sure it’s a carb-heavy lunch because a Carb Coma is what you’re after. You don’t need afternoon energy. You need a 2pm crash. An afternoon nap after a carb-heavy lunch is the best nap of the day. It’s warm, you’re drowsy, there’s a good chance you’ll fall into a deep sludge of a nap, the kind where you wake up and don’t remember what day it is. And that’s fine. Because all the days are the same. Nothing matters. Let your full belly tuck you in. Find that sunny spot on the couch and pull an afghan over yourself.

You’re trying to kill time but gently. You’re slaughtering time with pillows and soft blankets. You’re sacrificing hours on the altar of oblivion. Anyway, what IS time? What ARE days? The only way I can mark time these days is by counting the new gray hairs growing in around my temples. And I’ve lost count.

The children are sleeping differently, too. They are vampires, basically. The tweens and teens in this household stay up until 1am chatting with their friends on FaceTime and playing online games and then they sleep until 12pm. They’ve really got a good system going. They erase half the day in slumber and then maximize social time in the evening. I wish I could stay up late, too, but I’m old and talking on the phone past 7pm feels like work.

By 7pm I’m already well into my bedtime routine: brushing teeth and hair, changing into pajamas, fluffing pillows. By 7:45 I’m starting to doze while watching the BBC’s “Escape to The Country.” I also like watching Rick Steves before bed. Nothing bad or scary happens on these shows. It’s basically people walking around looking at things and then maybe having a cup of tea.

Even when this pandemic is over I don’t think I’ll travel because I will have already have seen everything. By 8pm my light is off and I’m creating my sleep nest. Yes, I have a bedtime nesting routine. Essentially, it’s a ritual of fluffing and arranging pillows. I require three pillows arranged in a specific layout. One for my head, one to hold and one to prop up my hand.

And then, it is sweet, beautiful nothingness. Ah, yes. SLEEP, my friends. This how you get through quarantine.