Caffeine > Sleep Quality.

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed I am focused on my sleep habits.

I’ve mostly been a good sleeper my whole life – certainly on planes… Where I can fall asleep before take off sitting straight up.

But shifts in my body chemistry over the past four years have made the quality of my sleep not as good.

I still get the same amount I’ve largely always gotten – six to seven hours a night, with one to two wake-ups to pee – but I am waking up drowsy.

The bright side is that I am nearly always waking up before my alarm goes off at 5am.

More sleep isn’t really the answer. My body temperature goes up at night, despite me keeping the room at 63 degrees Fahrenheit, with a ceiling fan on above me. And a lot of times, these days, I don’t even wake up in the middle of the night. I sleep through the whole night.

But when I wake and look at my Oura Ring app, I’ll see a sleep quality score of about 83/100.

The app considers that “good”. But it’s a few points shy of “optimal.”

I’ll look at the finer details in the app, mostly focused on my heart rate while sleeping (usually 49 beats per minute) and my heart rate variance (almost always classified as “optimal”), and I ease up on my anxiety about sleep quality.

Yet, it’s my goal… To bring my average from 83/100 to at least 85/100.

“Maybe you should give up your coffee routine?” a friend in California said when I was showing him the app.

“Maybe you should get punched in the face for suggesting that,” I said back to him.

I used to drink a lot of coffee.

A. Lot. Of. Coffee.

Now, I really drink only about 12 ounces of hot coffee, and have a shot of espresso around lunch time.

The 12 ounces comes first thing in the morning. I wake up, I open my bedroom doors to the outside. I make George’s breakfast (brown rice, ground chicken, zucchini, carrot mixed with some high protein kibble) while also pulling together my coffee.

French pressed. Measured using a scale for the beans and the water.

My preference is for coconut flavored creamer to go into the coffee – poured from a porcelain china creamer vessel. George’s food bowl, ehe French press, creamer, coffee cup with saucer, and a skull spoon are carried to my bedroom on silver tray I found at a second hand store in San Luis Obispo a few years back. George eats her food in her bed while I drink my coffee from mine while watching morning news.

This is our very favorite way to wake up in the mornings.

It is our routine.

And it’s not going to change.

I’ll sacrifice sleep quality for my coffee routine.

Plus, I don’t think my caffeine habit is bad for me. Or affecting my sleep.

It’s aging.

I look much younger than I am. The inside of my body is older than the facade.

I’m perfectly fine with this.

Don’t fuck with my routine.