Why Naps Could Save Your Life

This lady is actually 17, she just hasn't slept in a few days

You'll often hear students are art school talking (sometimes bragging) about how they had yet another all-nighters, or how they sleep at 3am on a regular basis, or how during finals week they only slept 5 hours all week! Wow, what an accomplishment!

So we (Monkey especially) has no right to criticize, as we often fall into the sleep-deprivation-contest just as often as anyone else. After all, Monkey + Seal totally understand the deadlines and having to push through to meet a deadline, going without sleep for sometimes crazy amounts of time. However, we also usually don't talk about the hard crashes we have afterward.

After our most recent gallery show, we slept at 4am, then woke up at 12:00pm the next day to go take down the show. That's 8 hours of sleep, plus the 4 hour nap that evening, plus another 9 hours of sleep that night = 21 hours of sleep in 2 days. We're still tired. Usually after events, it'll take a full week or so before we start really feeling like we're rested again, and that's assuming we're not already going life again a few days later.

Seal read this article (although it's on cracked.com, it seems grounded in actual studies, etc.), where an hour less of sleep is basically enough to increase your chances of dying in a car crash. Luckily, we usually don't do a whole lot of driving, but the point is clear enough. NAPS SAVE LIVES!

In all seriousness, we do advocate for artist sustainability, so we do advocate for naps. While Monkey prefers to sleep early rather than nap, the concept is still the same. While there are times that you have to push yourself and drink loads of coffee or tea or energy drinks or water or whatever you drink to stay awake, make sure that you don't let it become too much of a habit and get some rest.