Mac mini sleep mode

My Mac mini is a Late 2014, 8GB, 1TB SSD and has Catalina 10.15.16.

Recently I have noticed that after putting my Mac mini to sleep, wherein the light would glow on and off on a slow pulsating manner, it would eventually become and remain steady after. I would notice that the Mac mini (cpu box) would then be warm and I believe that it is no longer on "sleep mode" since the light would be steady. My System Preferences settings on Energy Saver is on "default" (Put hard disk to sleep when possible, wake for network access, enable power nap).

Before the recent updates on the OS, the light would always be slowly blinking, meaning the system is in sleep mode until I wake it up with the mouse or the keyboard. Now, I notice the light to be steady before I touch either the mouse or keyboard to start up the Mac mini.

Is this normal?