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I think I’ve done it. I think I’ve broken my nightly addiction to scrolling on my phone. Last Thursday I decided to follow my sleep hygiene guidance and put my phone all the way downstairs to charge before 10 p.m. The idea was that putting at least one floor between myself and my phone would make it very hard to grab it if I got the urge to scroll once I was in bed.
I’m not going to lie. That first night was pretty brutal. My brain was aching from not getting all of those little dopamine hits from scrolling through TikTok each night. Taylor Swift was doing the final parts of her Singapore Eras Tour that weekend, and I was going to miss all of the live feeds!
But, I stuck it out, and I managed to make it through the entire night without grabbing for my phone. And, in fact, I’ve managed to do that for the past six nights. I feel good that this sleep hygiene trick is really going to work.
So, what do I do instead of scrolling while I’m waiting to fall asleep? Why, I read, of course! I actually read a good, old-fashioned book. This time around, I picked up a well-worn and familiar favorite, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. I had already watched multiple versions of the movie, including the 1974 version with Albert Finney as the fastidious detective Monsieur Poirot and the 2017 version directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also played the part of the detective who loved to rely only on his “little grey cells” to solve mysteries.
Having seen the movie, I already knew the outlandish ending, but the book still kept my attention. Christie’s prose is simple, and her pacing is fast. You barely meet the various characters as they board the luxurious Orient Express when you’re met with a mysterious murder and a train stuck in the middle of a snow drift.
The claustrophobic setting lets Christie focus on the various personalities from all across the globe. She describes each of them with just a dash of distasteful stereotyping, but this book also let’s you in on Poirot’s character ticks (like his fussy need for his evening mineral water and his disdain of his fellow train employees lack of attention to detail. You could almost feel his eyes rolling back into his well-coiffed head as he asks them if they hadn’t missed something in their inquiry).
Having the energy to actually read a full novel rather than scrolling through endless Internet recipes, celebrities, and outrages was so refreshing. I was able to go to bed a least a couple of hours earlier, and I woke up actually feeling well-rested. Something I haven’t felt in a long while.
So, I highly recommend putting your phone away—don’t go to bed with it. And then, go ahead and pick up that next comfort read!
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