At first, I thought it was the stress of a new job. Four months later my right eye was still blurry.
The doctors couldn’t figure it out – my eyes were acting as though I were seventy-five years old! (Their words)
We thought it was a bad batch of contacts or solution. I had no issues while wearing glasses so this seemed likely. My ophthalmologist ran about a dozen tests while hammering me with questions… but everything came back normal. No abnormalities, no answers. Still borderline blind in one eye.
“Ok try these contacts, use only these eye drops, make sure you don’t look at your screen for more than twenty minutes at a time.”
I had marching orders from my Russian doctor and hoped that I’d be able to actually see my laptop while DJing the rest of the summer. Weeks passed but still, nothing. All the while however I had a sneaking suspicion there was a culprit they were not accounting for: Sleep.
I had just begun a new job a few months prior. With that came a 6:45 alarm instead of never having to set one! I was DJing full-time for over two years, and with that came a DJ’s sleep schedule. Weeks, months had passed but I was still averaging about six hours a night, 2-3 less than I had been getting previously.
Nor was I even recovering on weekends. Often I’d be DJing until 2 in the morning, unable to sleep in with my body-clock getting me up at 7.
I knew this was an issue but I hadn’t prioritized it properly, until now.
Back to Basics
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. – Peter Drucker
My first step in regaining control of my sleep schedule was simply to track it, each and every day. What time did I get myself to bed? How many hours did I end up getting?
I set reminders in Google Calendar to remind me to get to bed at 10:30 and track the previous night’s sleep. These two things alone got me on track within days. And what do you know, a week later my blurriness problems disappeared. I no longer hated my work and my overall mental disposition improved.
The cliche moral is get your damn sleep people! We all know it until our body starts complaining and getting in the way of our ambitions.
