Snoozing is harmless. Everyone snoozes, I thought to myself, when I chose to snooze today. After all, it’s only nine minutes.
But nine minutes matters. Ask my throbbing ankle.
Last night, I went to bed with a plan: wake up at six forty-five and run. I added weight to the commitment by scribing it into my journal before I turned off the light. Bedtime Ryan did his best to help morning Ryan.
At six forty-five, my alarm went off. For a millisecond—I know you too know this fragment of momentary choice—morning Ryan remembered the plan. Then, he said, “To hell with that” and slept for nine more minutes.
Not that I got up nine minutes later. That I did not. I opened the ESPN app. I looked at the weather. I checked the wind chill. And then, of course, the stock futures. All said and done, I exited bed at 7:02AM. “Not too bad”, I thought to myself. “No harm done.” But I knew.
I stretched. Drank a cup of coffee. Read for fifteen minutes. And all the while, I knew.
By 8:00AM, I was running. “Look at that. Nobody else is out here running”, I observed, praising myself for running in the thirty-four degree (twenty-seven with the wind chill) air. Still though, I knew.
Feeling warm after the first mile, my legs begged my brain to let them go and I hit our neighborhood greenbelt with a burst. The rocky trail was damp but unmuddied. The river was clouded by sediment but still a bluish green. The sky was overcast but with orange peeping on the horizon. I had snoozed but this was going to be a great day.
Midway through the greenbelt’s loop, I passed a woman with two dogs—one leashed and one unleashed. The latter dog, a Pomeranian, was up in the hillside sniffing around to the owner’s displeasure. Through a cinched hoodie, I could hear her yelling muffled profanity at the animal, beckoning for its return. Forty yards ahead of them on the trail, I could still hear her yelling when the Pomeranian started yelping. This wasn’t your average yelp. This yelp signaled grave danger and injury. I thought the Pomeranian was ensnared by barbed wire or clamped in the jaws of a bobcat.
Annoyed—this could’ve been prevented if the dog was leashed as outlined in the park’s rules—I swiveled my gaze backward down the trail without breaking stride, trying to assess the ruckus while maintaining my pace. I briefly glanced the woman walking casually behind me, unphased; she showed no concern at whatever had just happened to the dog. Satisfied that all was good, my eyes returned up the trail as my right foot glanced the outside of a protruding rock and “Pop!” went my ankle.
Fuck. I reflexively hopped on my left leg until my momentum stopped. I tapped my right foot to the damp dirt and felt an ice pick enter the joint. A second later, the Pomeranian bounded past me with a huge shit-eating grin on its face.
Unable to outrun the truth, what I’d known all morning was realized: I shouldn’t have snoozed.
Over my thirty-minute hobble back to the house, a distance I’d just ran in five minutes, I got to process my feelings, beginning with the Pomeranian and its owner. Yes, the dog should’ve been leashed. Yes, the owner should have better control over her animal. Yes, she should follow the park’s rules. But I control none of these things; that’s her life.
As I limped past a now unappreciated river, I turned the examination to my life. This was clearly avoidable if I’d just got up at six forty-five. If I didn’t snooze. But it happened, my ankle shooting out sparks as evidence.
What to do next—a choice similar to the one I faced after understanding the consequences of snoozing eight years of my life—was simple: learn and move on. Evidently, this was the wake-up call I needed today. This, like my dance with medicine, was the next lesson in life’s curriculum.
I felt some shame and loathed my choice, but shame hasn’t helped me much, nor has resentment. Thus, I chose is to see today as an experience—one that I’ll need the next time I’m tempted to snooze.
My life isn’t a monument to perfection. I want a life that’s a testament to progress. And today, I was lucky enough to learn something: I’d rather be tired than asleep.
My first book, 32 Lessons from 8 Years Lost in Medicine, just published on Amazon. If you’d like a copy of the e-book, here’s a link to purchase.
(Photo Caption: Seemingly awake, circa 2015, but I’d already hit an eight-year snooze. Another needed lesson in the curriculum.)
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