Me: Hey, I have to get up at 6am to be on TV.
My Brain: Yeah, I saw that.
Me: So it’d be awesome if you’d, uh …
My Brain: If I’d what?
Me: If you’d, you know, just be quiet for seven hours or so. Just stop cranking out story ideas and stuff and let me get some sleep. We can get back to writing all these awesome things tomorrow when we get back from the studio.
My Brain: Well … I’ll think about it.
Me: Yeah, you see, that’s kind of the problem…
Shush, Wil’s brain, it’s time for sleepies. Night night.
I have some variation of this conversation damn near every night.
i have that same conversation too but my brain always wins i have to wait till it is tired sometimes goes for days.
ambien.
Or: read something, and just accept the fact that you aren’t going to sleep. Always better than worrying about it.
Or: listen to an (unexciting but pleasant) audiobook with lights out. You might fall asleep, but even if you don’t you’ll get several hours of relaxation, including mental rest.
Switch thy poison to wine.
Red wine like a Rutherford Hill merlot seems to often work for me.:-)
Marijuana wil works wonders. NATURES SLEEP AIDE
Now, you see. I was just about to lay down, myself, and you have to go and mention beer! Now, my brain also thinks more beer is a good idea, and I’m up, watching a documentary on the USS Ronald Reagan, when I’m supposed to be sleeping. Good luck with the TV thing.
this happens to me all the time with programming. I’ll be working on some great piece of code, and I know it’s time for bed, so I go to bed, and I sit there for hours, my brain still thinking of the code that I was writing and all the cool things I can do with it.
Hope you got to sleep. Have fun @ the studio.
My brain did that all last night, only it was “how the heck am I gonna make this work?”
Argh school is making me literally lose sleep. I’ll be so happy when finals are OVER!
Here’s hoping y’all get more sleep than I’m likely to tonight!!!
Have you tried vodka instead? Works for me. Oh, wait. Then why am I still up?
Well… when brain of mine does like that, I pull out an old school economics textbook, and say to myself, “Codey, you have to read from page 21 to 42 and do questions #1-7,9,15 on page 45.”
No sooner than I hit the second paragraph on page 26, line six, the word “Maslow” – I’m done. Seriously. The next thing I know, the dog is licking my feet and I’m late for work… panic stricken but well slept.
Okay, you’ll probably want to set your alarm first… and well, what you do with you dog is your own business, so I’ll leave that up to you. 🙂
Sleep tight!
I know this feeling all too well. Just as I’m about to sleep I wake up and reel out about five pages and then remember that I have to wake up in 30 minutes.
Two days and then an exam, six days later another exam, two days later the deadline for a white paper then it’s time to work on my thesis – I keep Red Bull in business! Then someone always points out that I’m looking a bit sleepy and should drink more water. Of course Red Bull isn’t *quite* the same.
Love your sense of humour!
yeah smoke smoke smoke it’s 420 after all
Try using a little voice recorder to get all of those thoughts down, rather than feel obligated to write them down. Set the recorder by the bed, get them all out, then you may feel relieved that you have them noted and it will allow you to sleep. Then transcribe all of the recordings when you get a free moment.
I have a mockingbird you can have. It won’t help you sleep either, but at least you’ll have something new to curse. Trust me, I’m awake cursing it right now.
Check out the posting time. I didn’t win the battle.
FYI: alcohol doesn’t actually kill brain cells. That’s a myth.
I keep 10-15 gallons of beer and mead brewing at all times, in case of emergencies such as this.
terry-rw-whisenant
[email protected]
It was 420… you should have been celebrating. I use it to treat my insomnia. Side affects may include obesity and an intense fascination with Barney the Purple Dinosaur.
I don’t have a mockingbird, I have about five thousand frogs in a pond outside my window. They start “peeping” around six in the evening and continue their demonic symphony deep into the small hours.
I routinely curse them to the deepest hell.
If you sleep with the tv on, try turning it off. When I’m like that, I listen to William Fitzsimmons on the ol ipod.
“Marijuana = NATURES(sic) SLEEP AIDE(sic)”
S’funny – I thought DARKNESS was Nature’s sleep aid. Anything else you have to *process* into a form that you can smoke/snort/shoot/rub-into-your-belly/whatever…
As long as your brain doesn’t start plotting against you…or maybe talking about you behind your back, I think you will be OK.
http://www.alygatr.blogspot.com
Celebrate ‘420’ by toking up? Do you also celebrate ‘187’ by KILLING SOMEONE?
Get it legalized first, then smoke your merry heads off, kids. 🙂
My brain presents me with ‘windows’ of sleep opportunities. They come without warning: suddenly; I feel sleepy! (only without the exclamation point) If I immediately lie down, I go to sleep (usually). If I put it off for more than three minutes… say hello to at least seven more hours of wakefullness.
I was told age would cure this. Hasn’t yet. Well…almost. On the rare occasions I both plan to watch a TV show and actually do it (without doing anything else at the same time), I almost always fall asleep for the middle thirty—forty minutes of the show. Luckily, Discover, History, et al. show their stuff over and over and over again.
Ah, the misery that is the writer’s mind. I think, I think, I think too much and at the most inappropriate times. Thanks for stating a fact that helps us all feel less nutty and alone. 🙂
better than ambien who knows ten years from now we will all find out it causes some illness.,
and its not processed just picked dried and smoked .
Working on it. and who celebrates a murder you are Jaded and tripping.
I realize plenty of people talk to you.
But anyways, hi.
I drank achohal when i was five, but now im 13. lol
idk y.
This is my plight at the end of almost every day so I understand. I echo rexy2006’s wisdom of switching to wine next time. 🙂
im one of those people that can go to sleep only if im tired enough. Its rough on a work schedule. Sleeping at night usually included use of a radio (set between stations for that white noise) and a nice hot shower.
Massages help more. But sometimes that fails and i need to get up and take a long walk. Walks help.
simple meditation before bet sometimes helps. lost sleep is a product of your mind not properly winding down. Or in some cases, i drank five too many cups of jasmine tea at the chineese food joint.
no cafine 6 hours before bed, that stuff wull keep you up for days. heh heh
I have that happen to me a lot. Only with me it’s school, not work… Wait… That’s basically the same thing to go to school and try to not throttle the annoying kid behind you & to work!
You know, I’ve often wondered why the hell remembering the name of some teacher I had in the third grade is just so damn important to my respective brain at oh, say, 2:30 in the morning. If I could have killed it with beer, it would have been done years ago. And believe me when I say that I’ve tried that particular remedy to no avail several times over the years. The only thing that happens is waking up with a massive hangover the next day, so yeah, beer’s not gonna cut it.
Where the hell is the off switch? Was I not born with one because it wasn’t given enough time to develop because I was born almost three months premature? That’s the kind of shit that keeps me awake at night, and now, after having thought about whether or not my “off” switch was perhaps foiled by my impatient entrance into this world, now I know what will be keeping me up until well after 2:30 in the morning tonight…