My Not-So-Normal Bedtime Routine

All the experts say you shouldn’t do it, but each night I find myself tucked into bed with my cell phone in hand.

While my husband and our pets fall into a deep slumber, I stay up just a little longer, swiping and clicking, hoping to unwind just a bit more. They say I shouldn’t do it, but I ignore them.

I’m not staying up into the late hours of night checking Facebook or Instagram. It’s nothing like that. Instead, I hit the Imgur app, click on the category labeled “aww” and spend a few minutes taking it all in. It’s nothing profound, just a simple image-sharing site, but it allows me to easily scroll through all types of photos and internet memes. I turn to it when I need a good laugh, but at night I use it to look at cute pictures and gifs. Most of them are baby animals, and who doesn’t love them? There are also some human babies sprinkled in, and often a story of human kindness appears on my phone screen.

Doing this each night slows my mind down. Instead of thinking of all I didn’t get done that day, or all I need to do the following day, I see a collection of tiny puppies who have fallen asleep in their food, or a cat whose fur color appears to give him a mustache. I chuckle to myself and feel my body relax. It isn’t long before my eyes start involuntarily shutting, telling me it’s time to put my phone down and pull up the covers.

I’ve never been a rule breaker. If someone tells me I shouldn’t do something, I usually comply. This time, though, I have to disobey the experts. This simple routine brings me more joy than it probably should, but when you find something like that, you need to embrace it. Besides, who doesn’t want to fall asleep with visions of newborn bunnies running through their heads?