From the Backside column of Coast Mountain Culture #15, Mitchell Scott delivers a treatise on a subject close to our hearts…and eyelids.

There is one fleeting time in life that might be better than any other. Tragically, few of us choose to enjoy it: the blissful state of Perfectly Idyllic Post-Sleep or PIPS.

PIPS is the ultimate. It’s that morning you half-wake feeling glorious, cozy, and content. Crucial to this cocktail, however, is that you have nothing to do. It’s quiet. You roll in and out of dozing, stretching, yawning, dreaming, scratching. There is no agenda, no rush, no children, no spouses, no texts beckoning you to leave bed and join the “real” world.

Beware of PIPS’s significant adversary: Unsatisfactory Post-Sleep or UPS. That blasted time when you have to get up and you don’t want to. This is most mornings in your life. It’s the monumental challenge of achieving and then maintaining PIPS that makes it so incredibly fantastic.

Official PIPS Criteria:

  • You must not have important plans for at least two hours after MOA (Moment of Awakening).
  • You must not be hungover, sick, or have any sort of headache.
  • You must have had a reasonably great to very good sleep, seven to nine hours minimum, and yes, PIPS can only occur in the morning time. Naps do not count.
  • Room Temperature (RT) to Blanket Warmth (BW) must be ideal. For example, PIPS cannot happen in Fat Quilt (FQ) + Hot Room (HR) scenarios.
  • It is rare to experience PIPS in a bed that is not your own, but it is not impossible.
  • If you have a spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend, or bed sharer, they must be either a) out of the bed before your MOA or b) in an equal state of PIPS.
  • During PIPS, you are not allowed to think about anything other than how sweet PIPS is. Anything to the contrary effectively ends your PIPS session. Usually this means you must have had a successful and productive run of days leading up to PIPS.

Are you thinking PIPS might be more challenging to achieve than you thought? It is! In fact, most people avoid PIPS in order to be productive! “Lose an hour and you’ll be hunting for it all day,” say the self-help gurus. Because of this, PIPS is, sadly, associated with unsuccessful, lazy people. Blasphemy!

In our increasingly frenetic world, I say this: enjoy those rare PIPS moments, those mornings with pleasant MOA and finely balanced RT and BW. Fight back. I’ve started a one-day-a-week PIPS regimen, my only commitment to self-improvement. That being said, I promise not to write a seven-step self-help article about the beauty of rolling around in half-asleep, smiling, and falling in and out of dreamland.

Oh shit, maybe I just did.