Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

Professor Popinjay,

I’m tired of sleeping. Are there any alternatives?

Yours truly,

Snorts McCaffeine

Dear Snorts,

You are more than just an ample set of buttocks! You have a mind and a spirit and toenails! You have emotions which vampires drain out of you like an elephant drains a Capri Sun. Sometimes you just need to pick up a chainsaw and create art! All of these needs require a different kind of rest! There is definitely more to rest than sleep. In fact  there are 208 different ways to rest. Only fünf of these are appropriate for the general public and since this is a nice wholesome article where we would never even think of mentioning the word “buttocks”, we’ll focus only on these five.

1. Buttock Rest:

Just stop moving! This one shouldn’t be hard. It should be squishy and warm!  Not moving is most people’s favorite form of inactivity. After ten minutes of hard work, have yourself a couple hours of stagnation. You deserve it. I do it for days at a time. Ask my wife! She’s outside doing yard work.

While sleeping, some people spin like a Kenny Rogers’ Rotisserie Roasted Chicken. That’s hard work! Any chicken will tell you!! Simply making the conscious choice to not move while awake could be your ticket to rechargation!

Physical rest need not be confined to inertia. If you’ve been sitting and staring at a screen trolling noobs all morning then get up and start pumping those vivacious getaway sticks, toots!

Other forms of physical rest can be:

• Pretending you’re Marvel’s Mr. Fantastic
• Have “mommy” step on you.
• Observe the ancient Chinese tradition of “Siesta”
• Stare at customers blankly for 30 seconds before answering their questions.

Sitting still for longer than a millisecond allows your overexerted finite space/time vessel to reconstruct molecular cohesion and postpone premature entry into the Eternium. Only One of You Is Omnipotent after all. 

2: Mindlessness

Being social might seem easier since the advent of Dan Quayle’s America Online. Now you can be social and not wear pants and no one’s the wiser. That’s incredibly liberating. But Social media comes with a price. There’s Negative Nancy’s and Naysayers, every bad idea with a million followers, every toxic fandom and conspiracy theory and with these comes the mask of anonymity which enables and encourages the lack of good manners and social niceties.

Then there’s advertising, entertainment, consumerism, appalling news clips, sheer bloody horror and cute cat videos perpetually blasted into our faces from our phones, while we’re grocery shopping, even on the radio and billboards when we should be focused on not accidentally committing vehicular manslaughter. Add to that your five children each wanting to show you their drawings and feats of acrobatics and a demanding job that requires you to keep track of a new set of acronyms everyday. It’s TMI and you need to RSVP ASAP with some P & Q and R & R at a B & B before you BLEVE!

Your mind needs time to sort out important thoughts about your needs (like a Russell Stover’s Delicious Deep Dish Pizzeria Style Pizza on sale at participating grocers everywhere) from the more forgettable thoughts (like the 22 AI generated photos of secret CCTV footage from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry).

I mean look at yourself! You’re doing it right now! Turn off your phone and take Simon and Garfunkel’s advice: get into your sensory deprivation tank and contemplate the sound… of silence. You may find you have an inner monologue who misses you dearly. Or you might realize you’re an anthropomorphic hot dog named Sir Glizzy. Either way, it’s a nice break from being advertised to all day.

Other times when the QUANTITY of social interaction has taken its toll, the best rest from this is to switch to QUALITY social interaction. Might I suggest Rick Astley?

3. The Waaa-mbulance

People will probably call you petty when the proverbial straw which finally breaks your magnificent hump happens to be that coworker who borrows your pencil and then returns it with new teeth marks that do not match your pristine dental structure. Chewy VonBitenstein looks like he could eat corn through a picket fence! Now your perfectly pretty pencil has been ruined by his rusty bear-trap chompers! EVERYONE IN THIS OFFICE MUST PAY DEARLY FOR THIS OFFENSE! ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR!

Yeah, it can be like that sometimes. Emotional rest is an absolute necessity. It’s said time alone is time spent in bad company and idle hands are the devil’s weapons of mass destruction but maybe getting away from people for a while might be a good thing. Just bring a fidget spinner with you to ward off Mephistopheles.

Setting good boundaries is also helpful for maintaining emotional stability. If your dog or kids are taxing your emotions just get rid of them… for the weekend. They may complain or roll over and pee on themselves in protest respectively but you need “you” time. It’s not going to un-alive the kids to endure the fashion show in which Aunt Ruth forces them to engage while in her care. So she gets confused as to which hand-made costumes are for the kids and which are for the dog. It makes for hilarious Christmas card photos. Have you ever seen a child dressed like a four-legged elf?

Tertiarily, talk to someone! But for the love of God don’t talk to just anyone! There are professionals whose job it is to listen to you drone on about your problems and assist you in developing skills to help you cope with all the pencil-biting weirdos in your life. If you go around dropping your steaming emotional piles on everyone without their consent, then you are one of those vampires just sucking the life out of everyone. People are not your emotional voodoo dolls in whom you can poke out your frustrations. They likely care about you and probably will listen, but don’t take advantage of that or being your friend will become loathsome just like Aunt Ruth. Oh Aunt Ruth! Wherefore must ye so oft regale us of thy many epidermal lesions thou hast formed one mid-autumn’s morning?

4:. Creative Rest:

Whether your job requires you to redesign Michaelangelo’s statue of David to appeal to the sensitivities of uncultured pearl clutchers or the closest you’ve ever come to art is appreciating an obscene drawing on a restroom wall, taking time to create your own thing is an essential form of rest. While you may be more of a Yoko Ono than a Bob Ross, creative thinking can benefit you even if your daily chores do not involve happy little trees. Try engaging in something that recharges your creative thinking. It could be music, needle point, forming a pile of dirt into the shape of Devil’s Tower in your living room. It could be watching other people think creatively (Guillermo Del Toro). It could be watching people not think creatively (Michael Bay). Nobody doesn’t like Play-Doh or Lego! Try mixing the two! Stimulating our minds creatively keeps synapses firing and opens new neural pathways, keeping your ninja skills sharp and stealthy.

5.  Spiritual Rest:

There is strife caused by enmity, cynicism, and living in a world where hatred and death often prevail. Something must be done to interrupt this cycle. I urge you to evacuate whatever Waffle House you happen to be in and evacuate whatever evil waffles you’ve ingested there. Once we’ve expelled the bad we can replace it with good. Find an Off the Waffle Restaurant and order two Self-Fulfilling Prophecies. Give one to yourself and give the other to a stranger. Finally you are filling yourself with Goodness and sharing that Goodness with others. Now keep it going! DON’T LET THE FLAME DIE OUT!

Also I feel compelled to discourage you from snorting caffeine as an alternative to good wholesome Washington Irving style sleep. Bon chance!