Sleeping on Command

Traveling with Clinton is like chasing after a woman shot out of a cannon with rocket boosters strapped to her pantsuit: The world rushes past in a blur and you’re catapulted into an alternate reality, one in which days are relentlessly scheduled and life seems an endless progression from one meeting, interview, press conference, or statement to another, with flights covering thousands of miles in between. “Punishing,” “grueling,” “exhausting,” and, to a lesser degree, “fun” are the words most commonly used by her staff to describe the experience of traveling with her. Those close to her say that she benefits from the ability to sleep on command — and to draw on reserves of energy lacking in most mortals. “She’s nonstop on the road, and she wears out the staff and the traveling press,” says Andrew Shapiro, who worked for Clinton in the Senate and is now assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. “She’s just incredibly high-energy.”

Sometimes I feel like I am working all the time, and it’s mostly true, because I wake up most mornings at 5 a.m. to start working on projects, get to the office at 8 a.m. to work on the site, and then am back at home by 8 p.m. to eat dinner and crawl in bed to do some more work before falling asleep with my laptop on my chest. But I am in no way on the same level as our secretary of state. Seriously, can Hillary Clinton teach me how to sleep on command? Because that would be an incredibly amazing skill to have. I have a friend who says he can only get three or four hours of sleep each night, and I’m always like, “HOW?” and also, “Can you teach me?” Because I’d love a couple of more hours of awake time in my day, and my body tells me I need at least eight to not hate the world in the morning.

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.