“i have such a good life, i want to appreciate it more — and live up to it better” (13).

this is gretchen rubin’s explanation for why she has written the happiness project, an account of her year-long experiment to increase her appreciation for life. and this is also my explanation for why i wanted to read her book. rubin takes seriously current research that purports that 50 percent of one’s level of happiness is genetic, 10 to 20 percent is tied to life circumstances, and the “remainder is a product of how a person thinks and acts” (6).

after a period of introspection about what sorts of factors affect her personal level of happiness, rubin comes up with 12 goals and works on one each month. included in the happiness project are things like being mindful and paying attention to life’s details, reading more, staying in touch with friends, and lightening up her parenting approach. the idea is that readers will come up with their own particular sets of goals and carry out their own experiments in happiness. but there does seem to be one universal cornerstone of happiness, valued so highly by rubin that she makes it her goal for january. in a word, this factor is…

rubin sites research that suggests that “along with tight work deadlines, a bad night’s sleep [is] one of the top two factors that upset people’s daily moods” (19). furthermore, “getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person’s daily happiness than getting a $60,000 raise” (19).

the critical reading glasses i learned to don in college and grad school make me want to question these assertions. but the parent in me knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the importance of sleep could never be overstated. sleep is everything. without it, chasing a toddler feels like running against the wind with a parachute on your back.* with sleep, it’s possible to host a play date, cook dinner, deal with a sick dog, talk to one’s boss on the phone, and smile — all at the same time.

i’m not sure whether or not i’ll conduct my own happiness project. what i do know is that i am completely sold on the benefits of a sleep project. in fact, i’ve already started. last night i got ten uninterrupted hours of sleep. that’s right, TEN HOURS! but i’m on vacation, and my parents are keeping my kids. the real test will come on wednesday, when i return home to my kiddos and routine. will i go to bed earlier or succumb to the mind-numbing television that i dearly love?

oh, and if you’ve just put your kids to bed and you are up too late reading blogs, go to bed! when you wake up, you’ll feel like $60,000 dollars.

[source info for this post can be found on the bibliography page located on the sidebar to your right.]

*as i tried to think of metaphors that fully describe the difficulty of feeling sleep-deprived while chasing a toddler, all i could think of were other things pertaining to parenting a toddler. as it turns out, being sleepy while chasing a toddler is like pushing a stroller up hill, snagging a toddler from the stairs 50 times a day, looming over a toddler in the baby pool, cleaning up after a toddler eats yogurt, et cetera. in short, chasing a toddler on four hours of sleep is like, well, CHASING A TODDLER ON FOUR HOURS OF SLEEP!