the unbearable lightness of sleeping

I wrote this on my Facebook thing yesterday:

I’ve been trying to get myself on a sleep schedule that is consistent with the rest of humanity in my timezone. This isn’t easy, because my brain naturally wants to sleep between 2am and 10am, and has been that way pretty much my whole life. But in summer, especially, I like to get up early before it’s close to 100°, walk the dogs, and feel like I’ve actually accomplished stuff before noon.

So I’ve been getting myself into bed around 10 or 11, as I attempt to slowly move the clock back. I read until I’m ready to close my eyes, and I set my sleep thing on my phone to wake me up 8.5 hours later.

By the way: if you like science fiction, you probably want to subscribe to Lightspeed Magazine. It’s what I’ve been reading every night, and it’s always spectacular. It’s delivered to my Kindle once a month, and it’s one of my favorite subscriptions that I have. Also, keep your eye on the Humble Book Bundles, and Vodo.net.

They *always* have great, inexpensive, amazing books on sale.Okay, back to … whatever this thing is.

So last night I got into bed a little later than I wanted — around 11:30 — and picked up my Kindle. Which had a dead battery. Shit. No worries! I picked up the actual book I’ve been reading (Imbibe! is a book about cocktail history, culture, and recipes), and read for awhile. I turned off the light when my body signaled that it was ready to go to sleep, and put my head on my pillow.

You know what’s coming, right? Just like the comics, my brain went from being sleepy to being WIDE AWAKE WITH LOTS OF STUFF TO THINK ABOUT in under a minute. It’s okay, I thought, I can power — err, the opposite of power, I guess, since I’m trying to go to sleep — through this. I began doing this relaxation/breathing/self-hypnosis thing that has always worked for me… but it didn’t work for me.

A side effect of one of my brain meds is that, occasionally, my left leg will twitch like crazy, and my whole body won’t let me get comfortable. Last night, it set itself to eleven and went bananas.

I think it was finally 3am when I just gave up, and sat up in bed. I grabbed my phone, and looked at Twitter for a few minutes. I hoped that occupying my mind would somehow work some voodoo or whatever on my legs.

It didn’t.

So I fired up Bejweled, and played a game … that lasted to level 11. I don’t know if that’s as good as I think it was, but it felt pretty great to play that long (until I realized that it was nearly 4am) and I got a badge that I can turn in for nothing at a redemption counter that doesn’t exist.

So at 4am, whatever the hell was going on with my leg finally stopped, and I turned off the lights again. This is when Luna, my cat, jumped up on me, snuggled into my chest, and began to purr. It turns out that the warm weight and soft purring of my cat on my chest really helped me fall and stay asleep.

Until the goddamn jackhammer started four hours later.

I got up at 9:30, because I am committed to going to sleep earlier and getting up earlier, even if it means that I didn’t get as much sleep last night as I wanted or needed.

I’m fairly sure that I won’t have much of a problem with that in about 10 hours.

—

So last night, I watched a pair of movies that I really liked: It Follows, and Ex Machina. I think it was about 12:30 when I got into bed. I read almost a full page of my book before I felt sleep coming on, so I powered off for the night … and didn’t fall asleep for two hours. Sigh.

71 thoughts on “the unbearable lightness of sleeping”

  1. We call it ‘kitty coma’ and it was the one thing I could count on with anything close to consistency on those nights I couldn’t sleep. I’d go to the living room so I wouldn’t wake up my husband with my tossing or med-induced fidgeting, put something mindless on the idiot box, and stretch out on the sofa. Usually before I’d even settled down, one or both cats were there, waiting for me to get comfy so they could snuggle in. Even if I still couldn’t sleep, I felt better for the fur therapy. Unfortunately, no cats now so those sleepless nights get awfully long.

  2. My brain wants exactly the same… (And for two sweet years in my life I had a job where I could actually live like that.)

    Meanwhile I gave in, there is no way to “teach” my brain to go to sleep earlier and I have to get up around 7 a.m. My life saving solution is napping in the afternoon… (And a long sleep at least on the weekend.)

    (And chocolate… you can replace an amazing amount of sleep with calories…)

  3. Yep, it happens. It’s not fun, but consider that some people lose sleep because they don’t know what they’re going to do to make ends meet, and other people lose sleep because they have too much going on and they can’t stop thinking. You’re in the more fortunate of those two groups to be sure. Not much solace when your eyes feel like sandpaper, but…

    Onward & upward oh captain my captain.

    Here’s something interesting that might give you some chuckles & relaxation. Reminiscing about simpler times helps me when I can’t find where sleep has gone off and hidden itself. Man … I can’t even remember how I came across this, but it is a strange video – makeup tests with elevator music in the background. But the thing that floored me was how young you & Levar Burton looked. I mean you looked… My God… I’m sure I have socks older than you were in this video.

  5. The usual advice is to not use electronics for at least a few hours before bedtime, especially stuff like phones, computer screens etc. We don’t watch tv, though we do watch DVDs of an evening, but we save exciting stuff for early and watch calm stuff last.

    I take that a step further and at bedtime read a series of books that is light but interesting enough that I can just go round the 21 books of the series and back to the beginning. I save the new books for daytime reading. An interesting new book, or a gripping old one, will keep me awake and also make my brain too thinky for sleep when i do try to turn off the light.

    We also keep our lights fairly dim at night (and no fluro globes), make sure the room is very dark for sleeping, and turn off as much electrical stuff as we can at the wall (and turn off wifi). It all helps. I cannot bear lying there at night with thinky brain! (And our days start at 6am no matter what sleep we’ve had.)

  6. Thank you Wil for sharing this and thanks to all who commented, especially Kate and Nicole.

    I have never found so many infos from other “night owls ” than here in this comment thread.
    Now i know that the “collisions” of life and its duties and my needs to sleep is a known health issue. I found some statistics about the average need of sleep and sleep phases but from this i thought i was simply “some” off the average. I.e I need around 9hrs of sleep (better 9.5) and when i get up before 9AM i am almost useless for any kind of task that requires cognitive skills ( i am software developer ). When there is no obligation for getting up at a specific time over a longer period ( like now, i am working on a project at home and on my own ) my sleep phase slowly shifts to around 5AM to 2 – 3 PM, but this is stable without alarm clock 🙂
    Forcing this schedule back to “world compatible” works better for me when done slowly by staying up 3 hours longer and sleeping up to ten hours. This takes around one week but works way better than getting up earlier and surviving the days on coffee.
    I am now working freelance. Most companies let me organize my work schedule on my own even when access to the company is required ( more precise: dev for embedded devices / control / firmware ). I had troubles with my last employer who could not understand / did not want to believe that i perform way better when i showed up at 10 -11 AM instead of 9AM. In fact i performed so badly that it stressed me and made me aggressive because i knew i could do better but was not able to because of the lack of sleep. We then had an agreement witch improved the situation slightly but with a big disadvantage for me: every hour i showed up after 9 AM i had to work in addition to the daily 8 hrs. So a regular week never had beyond 45 hrs, not speaking of the weeks near deadlines. But this way i could rely on my skills when doing my work.

    ( sorry for my poor english, my native language is german )

  8. Have you been tested for apnea? I was just reading a post by Jen Yates [from Epbot/Cakewrecks] and she wrote this which made me think of your nighttime panics:
    “… Many months ago John discovered that I stopped breathing during my sleep a lot. It spooked him. I didn’t think much of it, but then his sister – who has anxiety like me – told me how she learned she has sleep apnea even though she doesn’t snore, and it was contributing to panic and insomnia and daytime fatigue. Once she got a CPAP machine, though, she felt amazing.

    That convinced me to give it a try, so we spent the next several weeks arranging an at-home sleep test (which showed I do have apnea, yay), and then convincing doctors to prescribe a machine without a follow-up in the expensive overnight lab.

    Meanwhile, my nighttime panic was getting worse, or maybe I just noticed it more. I’d wake up feeling like I was choking, heart racing, palms sweaty. This seemed to confirm that apnea was the culprit in my mid-sleep panic attacks. I’d had those happen off and on for a while, but then they started happening almost every night. Desperate, I began sleeping sitting up, just biding my time until we could get a machine. …”

    [I’m never sure if I can post links on blogs without it getting tagged as spam, so you can find that post from 19 June titled “Getting Used To Disappointment” on Epbot.]

  9. I have battled insomnia off and on since I was about six, and one of the few things that has consistently worked for me is the Sleep Solutions CD (you can also download as an MP3 via Amazon) by Roberta Shapiro. She takes you through a very simple, calming, guided meditation and I’ve found that it helps me cut off racing thoughts and restlessness and drop me right into a deep sleep. Since it’s not something I’ve had to deal with, I have no idea what impact, if any, this would have on restless leg syndrome, but I do know that it works better for me than Ambien or other sleep meds ever have, and it is especially effective when I pair it with other good sleep hygiene like doing a nighttime routine, not watching TV before bed, etc.

    FWIW, I’ve recommended this to a few other friends and family members, and everyone who tried it has said it helped them, too. One hint: part of the visualization is about being near water, so my first time through, I pictured myself by a river, which is sort of my own happy place. Alas, the CD immediately added ocean waves noises behind the main audio and my inner perfectionist freaked out at having picked the “wrong” mental image, so I had to start it over and do it “right” before I could sleep, but now that I know to imagine myself on a beach, it works like a charm. LOL

    Regardless of what you try, I hope you are able to get a solid night’s rest soon. Insomnia can be agonizing!

  10. I’m a teacher and I like having the same sleep schedule all year. Even in summer I’m up by 7. Plus, living in the south, it’s essential because you’re right, it’s 99 or 100 degrees by 1 pm.

  11. No hate comments please, this is just my personal experience. I suffer from anxiety/panic disorder (among a myriad of other wonderful things), and one of the symptoms that is the hardest to overcome is turning my brain off at night. It’s like the light goes out and my brain goes, “PARTY!!” I have tried learning meditation and all that jazz, but again, my brain LOVES silence and immediately goes into “Let’s see how many things can I think of at once?” mode.
    The solution that works for me is Xanax before bed. It literally turns off my brain. I’ve done all the sleep aids, but Xanax is the only one that works.
    As for your legs. Is it like restless legs? I get that occasionally. One thing I’ve found that is great for people with anxiety and restless legs, is a weighted blanket. I won’t endorse anyone in particular, but Google it. It’s like having a heavy animal lay on you and suppress those nerve endings. It kinda sucks to use in the summer, but the rest of the year it is very calming. They started originally for children with autism. I have a friend whose husband also uses one and he loves it.
    No matter what, I hope you are able to get your sleep Wil. Good luck.

    1. I have Asperger’s and I have to have blankets on me to be able to sleep year-round. I’ve tried just using a sheet in the summer when it’s hot, but it’s not heavy enough. I can usually get by with a large comforter or bedspread, so I haven’t needed to buy/make an actual weighted blanket, but I can definitely see it working well for both me and my husband, who has RLS.

  12. Have you read Clark Strand’s “Waking Up to the Dark” (came out in April)? He posits insomnia is so common because humans are built to have 2 periods of deep sleep a night, with an hour or so of quiet awakeness in between. With the lights out. But because we think we’re supposed to “sleep through the night”, we try all sorts of tricks to force ourselves back to sleep if we wake up after Period 1, stressing out and eventually missing Period 2 altogether. He suggests instead looking at that waking period as a normal part of the sleep cycle and just relaxing/meditating through it. Works for me.

  13. If you haven’t already grab Wondrich’s book on Punch as well. You haven’t lived until you’ve done some Steampunk RPG play while drinking arrack punch. No, I’ve not done that either, but I have had the rack punch…. totally worth the effort. Besides, any homebrewer will enjoy making shrubs as well.

    Good luck with the sleeping stuff.

  14. I use this trick when I cannot get to sleep. I put on a dvd of an old season of the Simpsons and hit play all. I know them by heart, and enjoy watching them, but I know them all by heart, so they don’t keep me awake by making me want to know how it end. My mind is distracted, but it doesn’t keep me awake.

  16. Hi wil
    I know this is an older blog post but it has taken me a while to process through things and I wanted to give a coherent reply-

    Based on your recommendation above and amazon’s excellent “try it for free for 30 days” offer I subscribed to lightspeed magazine and, ultimately, elected not to retain it. I am not complaining, However I wanted to explain why it wasnät my thing.
    Iäve been an analog subscriber for more than ten years, initially in print (which led to some fun missing issues in Ireland) then on kindle (much better, I can read it anywhere and I never lose track of what Iäve read or where the previous issues have gotten to (for serialised fiction I prefer to wait until the whole thing is there and then burn through it in one go). So my basis is comparative.
    Analog: editorial is opinion piece, often thought provoking, not always something I agree with.
    Lightspeed: Editorial is summary of contents of the stories contained
    Content: Analog is entirely original fiction, usually broken down in to novelettes, sometimes a novella or one of a normally four part serial, and 4 or 5 short stories.
    Lightspeed, two reprints, two novel excerpts, one extra long story instead of two.

    It is clear that you enjoy lightspeed and I appreciate the recommendation and amazon willing to let me try it for free, however I did not want to put up a “tried lightspeed, it sucked” post as that seems cheap and nasty (also not reflective of my thoughts on this matter).

    Feel free to give analog a spin and let us know what you think.
    I do adore tabletop, not watched any of the titansgrave stuff yet but Iäm sur eit will be excellent.
    Cheers and bye
    Alan/Phazedout

  17. Ever try melatonin? I’ve had some success with it especially traveling and dealing with multiple time zone changes. It might not be something you want for every day, but when I need to “reset” my clock, it has been helpful/

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