Day 12 - cleansing and detox

I remember when I left my first job after college. It was at a small 5-person engineering firm in Modesto, California. I never really cared for engineering even when I was studying it, and I hadn't yet realized that some people liked their work. I didn't even think it was possible: work was work. One lives for one's time off. 

On my last day, the principal for whom the firm was named shook my hand and wished me luck. And I can still picture the way he looked when he told me that he hoped that I would stick with engineering because it was "so fun!" If I hadn't seen how genuine he was when he said it, I wouldn't have believed it. He really meant it - engineering is fun. 

Which got me thinking about how much of a disadvantage I must have been in when I was in college. What if all the other students in my classes actually enjoyed what they were studying? Was that possible? How much easier it was, then, for them to learn the material, do the assignments, and in most cases, excel at what they were doing! 

Why do I bring this up? I've gone four or so days without needing, and I mean needing, a nap in the afternoon. It wasn't necessarily out of boredom, or lack of drive, or being lazy or depressed (although many of those things start working their way into the mix too); I was plain sleepy for what I am now convinced was some sort of chemical imbalance: this nutritional cleansing is clearing the toxins out of my body.

So it has me thinking about how much of a disadvantage I've been in all these years, actually decades, to all the people that haven't had this need to sleep and nap during daylight hours. Oh yes, of course, I've had my advantages and others have had their own sets of challenges that maybe I haven't had to face, but I'm starting to feel as if I have another six hours in the day to do something with; if I wasn't actually napping before, I didn't have much energy to do much of anything anyway. I'll have to start learning what it is I can accomplish now. 

Like I mentioned before, my personality isn't going to suddenly transform from introvert to extrovert though. I'm no Type A, but I don't have to be a Type Zzzzzz anymore either.