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service and sleep

Posted by matthew on 06 Jan 2012 / 0 Comment

It didn’t take long to think of a cou­ple things that I would like to add to my Oper­a­tion Twenty12 project.

Volunteer/Make a Dif­fer­ence — This item doesn’t really have much of a back story. I’d like to think that I am gen­er­ally will­ing to pitch in when needed. When I was in high school, I used to tutor young kids. That was nearly 30 years ago, though. After doing some seri­ous intro­spec­tion, I feel that I have not been incred­i­bly active in doing things that can/could make a dif­fer­ence in the lives of oth­ers, the com­mu­nity, or the planet. Friends have often called me “a man for oth­ers,” because I’ve shown some level of self­less­ness. Those acts usu­ally ben­e­fited friends. I think it’s time to broaden my acts benev­o­lence beyond those I know.

I think a lot of us get caught up with the strug­gles we face in our day-to-day lives. How­ever, when I step back and take stock of where I am, and what I have, the real­ity is that my strug­gles pale in com­par­i­son to those fac­ing many oth­ers. As part of my Oper­a­tion Twenty12, I would like to find ways to freely give my time, energy, and heart to some cause(s) that res­onates with me. Hav­ing reached the some­what ripe age of 45, it’s about time that I take this on. I only wish that I had started down this path sooner, so that I could have mod­eled this behav­ior for my son. For­tu­nately, his school has requires vol­un­teer work of the stu­dents from pretty early on, so I hope that ser­vice becomes part of his DNA, if you will. In fact, it would be great if my son, wife, and I could do some vol­un­teer activ­i­ties together.
 
Become a Bet­ter Handy­man — The other notion of ser­vice that I’d like to add to my Oper­a­tion Twenty12 project is becom­ing a bet­ter handy­man around my house.

Grow­ing up, my dad or step­fa­ther han­dled most of the “fix it” stuff around our respec­tive houses. I never really took an inter­est in learn­ing how to assem­ble, main­tain, or repair things. Yard work. Ugh! I was often charged with mow­ing the grass or pluck­ing weeds, but I didn’t pay atten­tion to the order of plant­i­ngs in the flower beds, or think about why soi­land rock near the house was slanted/pitched away from the house. Fast for­ward 30+ years and I under­stand the rea­son. That under­stand­ing, how­ever, has not trans­lated into a fully empow­ered, tool-bearing Mr. Fix It. I mow the grass because I have to (and don’t want our house look­ing ghetto), but I have not spent much time think­ing about how to bet­ter land­scapearound the house. Part of my back­yard have become over­grown, and I only do min­i­mal prun­ing to keep things from grow­ing com­pletely out of con­trol. Rooms need to be painted. A toi­let needs repair. A bath­room tile is cracked.The attic needs to be cleaned out an insu­lated. The fence enclos­ing the back­yard is a mess (ran­dom pick­ets in stock­ade fence are miss­ing). What was that about not want­ing to my house to look ghetto? [sigh]

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that for years I’ve declared that if I had more money…I would gladly hire some­one to do all this stuff. The more I think about it, though, I’d like to knock a lot of these tasks out myself and feel a sense of accom­plish­ment. This endeavor truly falls into the spirit of Oper­a­tion Twenty12, because I can­not imag­ine that I willmirac­u­lously know how to erect or repair cer­tain things around the house.  Nat­u­rally, I need to start look­ing at some repair books, as well as attend some of those free classes atH­ome Depot or Lowes, but this is one of the items in my project where I will gladly accept the advice, coun­sel, and help­ing hand from friends. Please feel free to drop some sug­ges­tions — how-to books, mag­a­zines, tools, or a check­list of basic tools –  in the com­ment sec­tion below.
 
Get More Sleep — For quite some time, I’ve said, with pride, that I’m not much of a sleeper. I may get four to five hours a sleep each night. Even as a kid, I didn’t sleep much at night, nor at nap time. In fact, I dis­tinctly remem­ber when I was kid, dur­ing a pre­scribed nap time, my dad say­ing, “Well, if you don’t sleep you at least need to lay in the bed qui­etly.” (I used talk to myself dur­ing nap time.) I did seem to sleep a lot in junior high, but I attribute that to grow­ing pains — I grew about 15 inches in one year. I rel­ished the fact that I didn’t sleep much when I was in law school, because work­ing dur­ing the day and attend­ing classes in the evenings didn’t leave much time for sleep.

illus­tra­tion by mark rohde

I know the basic restora­tive ben­e­fits of sleep. Just do a search online about the ben­e­fits of sleep, you’ll prob­a­bly lose a good deal try­ing to go through all the infor­ma­tion. There was a chap­ter devoted to need for get­ting sleep in the book Rework, a good read by the way. Finally, yes­ter­day I came across a study that dis­cussed the con­nec­tion of sleep depri­va­tion and obe­sity. Given the other com­po­nents of my Oper­a­tion Twenty12 project, it would seem like get­ting more sleep is a nat­ural addi­tion.