Napping: My Guilty Afternoon Pleasure

A morotcycle taxi guy snoozes away the middle of the afternoon with a new cycle catalog covering his face.  Maybe he's dreaming of a newer model than the one he currently owns, you think?

Many in the USA would associate an afternoon nap time with those who are either pre-school age, retirement age or perhaps even creeping toward a second childhood.  Thankfully being past the 9-to-5 working stage I don't often have the afternoon obligations I wore as my yoke in the fields of the working world, but there's always life itself, and those already retired will understand that completely.

The main item to check off my daily list is my writing, and that's always an iffy thing to schedule. With a number of projects in the works it's not unusual for me to look up and see that it's past lunchtime and I'm not 100% pleased with what I've accomplished so far.  My guess is everyone has days like this.

The old line I heard often enough in an office setting was "the job expands to fill the time allotted," and there's a certain element of truth to that.  The phone rings with an incoming call from someone I'm happy to see looking up at me from my phone ID screen, the computer *dings* to announce the arrival of something emailed or messaged to me from somewhere across this wide, wide world of ours, I stop too often to look in on the few online forums I participate in, there are two newspapers to read in addition to the revolving stack of books on the table next to me and the usual business of keeping a home to occupy my days.  Add to that the pleasure that is my circle of friends and family and it can be a very full day.

AND... there's the ever-present lure of an afternoon nap; at the top of my personal list of guilty pleasures.  Part of the attraction is advancing age and not sleeping as soundly as I did in my youth, and part of it is simply that I've always enjoyed it and now find that since there's nobody looking over my shoulder to make sure I have my nose to the grindstone there's nothing to stop me - other than my usual feelings of obligation for everything in paragraphs two and three above.

I don't sleep in like I used to.  It's not that I can't, it's just that I don't.  Even during my working career I was up early on the weekends, because there were things that I wanted to do, although I could hit the snooze button a dozen times on Monday through Friday... go figure.

Decades ago, in more - ahem - colorful times of my life I loved the feeling of being pulled into slumber in a number of ways, but since I now choose to participate more fully in my own life I don't have any of those as an option any more, and perhaps that in and of itself is part of the hypnotic draw of an afternoon nap.

What on earth does this have to do with Thailand?  OK - I'll tell you.  I love early morning walks, so I'm often up while the sky is still pink, but by mid-afternoon I'm often ready for a tepid shower and a nap until the sun is lower in the sky.  That also leaves me re-charged for the evening and into the first part of night time before I'm heading back to my room for the night.

You of any age may want to give it a try, too.  Siesta time is an idea whose time has come, in my opinion.