why doesn’t this exist?
so i do a lot of thinking about sleep and the arising therefrom, and this morning after i got myself up and was sipping some tea i started on the track of “all i really need is to start my metabolism going, but the problem is that i’m so cozy and groggy that it is difficult to get myself to move my arms from underneath the blanket to ingest anything, even water that is sitting right beside my bed.”
this family of thought trains has brought us such ideas as: start breathing deeply as soon as i capture enough consciousness to remember to do so, because air, at least, can be consumed in any position, and is the foundation of the rest. this does a lot, but then i still need to keep stepping up the intake ladder, and so today i started musing on how it would be helpful if i could just have someone drop one of those gross jellified energy paks into my mouth, or maybe if i strapped a camelbak full of coffee to the ceiling and then just had to slide underneath the straw. thinking of silly ideas like that made me happy, but then i was like, wait… why don’t they make time-release caffeine pills that you take before bed and then kick in after 8 hours? that’s like setting the coffee machine to make the world smell good in the morning but without the step of actually having to go get the coffee. that would be brilliant!!
i asked google and found some interesting stuff. they DO make time-release caffeine pills but not in the don’t-release-anything-for-a-while style, rather in the release-this-slowly-so-i-can-code-all-night-without-buying-more-mountain-dew style, which is useful in it’s own right, but quite different.
i also learned that green tea acts as time-release caffeine because the tea is encased in tannins, which is part of why the high from green tea is mellower. that’s nice. i’ve been enjoying toasted green tea quite a bit lately. it’s good. i like to do this walkup to caffeine thing where i drink green tea early, black tea late, and coffee after lunch. but that’s not this post, i guess.
perhaps most enlightening, however, was the discovery that one can purchase time-release caffeinated tights. snake oil man sez they get rid of cellulite. methinks they get rid of pesky extra dollars.
someone else did already have my idea, but he just mentioned it in this mefi thread two years ago and everyone else ignored him.
their loss, yo. srsly.
my first thought was that it must be hard to make something time-release after multiple hours. but we make birth control that releases itself for months at a stretch. so what gives? i’m half sarcastic and half serious. do people feel more like addicts when they pop pills instead of drinking their drugs with cream and sugar? is getting up on our own a source of emotional victory such that getting help from a pill would make people depressed? does time-release feel too sci-fi for daily use? would it be possible but expensive? did i just not look far enough into my google results to find the winner? it seems like the idea crosses some sort of line, and i’m curious about what it is.
August 9th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Is this all an elaborate way to keep yourself busy so you never get to the point where you have to admit that getting out of bed is not about inventing a pill or breathing, or drinking water, but, simply, getting out of bed?
August 9th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
no. i admitted that long ago. to you, even. we just have different approaches to cultivating that discipline, and right now thinking about the distribution of labor between internal and extermal chemicals is a part of mine, and i’m getting confident enough to start musing aloud a bit more. so consider that progress. :)
in general, though, we know i put a lot of value on going slowly for the sake of noticing the hurdles i invent along the way. because i believe that in so doing i can spend energy on the parallel task of strengthening the muscles that will make clearing these hurdles’ cousins much easier once i’m out of bed and on to the next event.
you say i’m stalling and the best way to build muscles is to jump.
we’re both right.
and we’re both getting stronger.
and we both still have days when we don’t want to leave the house.
so onward, diversity. what was that on the libertarian post about confusing what’s right for us with what’s right for everyone? ;)
August 10th, 2007 at 9:08 am
I have discovered mate’ from Brazil as my favorite caffeine energy drink – I got some tea called mate’ lift from an online tea store: http://www.tealaden.com; the mate gives me energy through out the day without that caffeine jolt that comes from other highly caffeinated drinks plus I know there are no additional additives (unless I add sugar to it)