I’m not a night person. I love my early mornings and find I am at my best before breakfast. As such, my after dinner hours are quiet. I find myself wanting to rest or read; do a craft or watch a movie. And sometimes, when I’ve stayed up too late, I hit what we call, in my family, “The Wall.”
The Wall is going from 100 to 0 in .01 seconds. My partner and I joke about how we can be sitting on the sofa, laughing and spending really pleasant time together. Then, out of nowhere, I’ll look at him and say something along the lines of, I don’t want to be awake anymore. In which case, he knows we have about five minutes before I’m asleep, and 90 seconds before I’m cranky.
It’s good to know one’s limits.
In these infrequent moments of having stayed up too late, I will occasionally find myself moaning about how I’m too tired to even crawl into bed. (Reader, at most, our sofa is about 15 steps from our bed.) This will be followed by how I don’t want to brush my teeth. (A whopping additional 20 steps.)
Of course, the last logical brain cell always carries me to the bathroom where I brush my teeth and go to bed. But sometimes, in the rarest occasions of fatigue, I “brush my teeth but don’t do a good job.” Now is not the hour for flossing.
And while this feels like a funny thing to admit or write a blog about, I think it’s a relatable piece of tangible advice.
If you cannot bring yourself to floss, at least brush your teeth. If you cannot bring yourself to brush your teeth well, at least brush poorly.
As it turns out, in these most extreme cases of sleep deprivation, once I start brushing my teeth, I almost always finish and usually to a dentist-approved standard.
A little something will always be better than a little nothing. So next time you are upset that you cannot go for a 30 minute walk, go for a 15 minute walk. The next time you feel like you can’t possibly respond to all the emails in your inbox, reply to one. The next time you feel like you’re about to give up, give it one more try. Give it five more minutes. See what happens if you hang on a little longer.
It might just mean no cavities. Or it might mean that you change your life.
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