The Siesta Lifestyle

Chill out, sister!

What am I? A fortune-teller? When I wrote this last November was I channeling some inner Tarot card reader who could foresee my nap-lifestyle on steroids coming with the spring of 2020? Maybe.

We went to Spain and Portugal earlier this year and I almost immediately “got” the siesta way of life.

Our trip began in Barcelona at the end of May where the weather was mild and even a bit chilly but by the time we got down to Granada and then Seville the weather was getting hotter and hotter. It was the beginning of June and we just missed the first 97-degree (36 celsius) day of the year in Seville. This is when we really began to encounter an incredibly civilized way to live. I can’t imagine how we have allowed ourselves to be forced out of our comfortable beds to go to some office or garage or construction site or schoolroom or traffic intersection or factory floor for eight unforgiving hours or more.

In more relaxed parts of the world, people do rise early and work hard. Then when the day starts warming up they do the sensible thing. They go home and have some lunch, pull the light-blocking shutters closed, and go to bed for a couple of hours (even though our places in Granada and Seville had air conditioning we didn’t need it thanks to those serious shutters).

We would emerge from our cool, dimly lit rooms around 5 pm and wander in search of food. One thing we discovered our first night out in Barcelona is that mealtime in Spain is not a rushed affair. The people at the next table chatted over several glasses of wine before asking for the menus and they were still there lingering over dessert when we left an hour and a half later.

By late May, early June, we were still enjoying full daylight as late as 9:30 pm and the endless twilight filled with hundreds of swooping swallows lingered until nearly 11 pm. This made getting up at 5 pm and heading back out to wander and find food ideal. We’d be up for hours getting lost, finding interesting places to eat and eventually starting the nightly trek back to wherever we were staying

It was a rude and unpleasant homecoming when I found myself back at the mercy of the alarm clock and the morning commute. I adjusted. Of course, I did. We all do. But it made me cranky and every weekend we’d slide back into the siesta lifestyle, rising early and working hard (we both write and AleXander is an amazing collage artist), maybe going for a walk around the Harlem Meer in Central Park, two blocks from our apartment, and then settling in for a lovely two hour nap.

This is not good “sleep hygiene”.

The result would be Mondays and even Tuesdays that were down to what’s basically jet lag. We’d tell each other how bad it was to do this every weekend and then every weekend we’d succumb to our heavenly siestas.

Now we’re both unemployed.

You see where this is going, right? We’re up until 2 or 3 am most nights, writing, watching movies (big thumbs down for John Sayles’ old classic, “Baby, It’s You” but even bigger thumbs up for Italian director, Mario Monicelli’s, powerful film, “The Organizer” starring a bespectacled and curiously soft-spoken Marcello Mastroianni), making love and watching our videos on YouTube.

We do break tradition, however, and sleep until we feel like getting out of bed which is generally between 10 am and noon. Although, once we’re up we do work hard. In addition to what we write and publish here on Medium, we’re working on another Anomalous Duo video as well as taking advantage of our free time to act like tourists in New York City (albeit tourists who know where the really cool shit is and who avoid Times Square and the “Freedom Tower” like the plague).

I’m off to interview for a position as a Communications Specialist in the morning with the same organization which laid me off six weeks ago. And, here again, is the eternal face-off between time and money. I’ve written about my experiences as a very poor person before and I am determined to never again have to decide between paying the rent and keeping the lights on.

So, enjoyable and civilized as it is, The Siesta Lifestyle (for now) is temporary. Much as I love doing what I want to do when I want to do it I’m very aware of this life on life’s terms business and am ready to suit up and show up. Again.

How do you balance your ideal life with your actual life?

© Remington Write 2019. All Rights Reserved

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