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The paradox of sleeplessness |
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Written by Administrator
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Friday, 27 November 2009 |
I have never been what you would call a morning person. I don’t get all grumpy and moody (Well, not typically), but I definitely prefer sleeping in to getting up early.
It seems to me that I do some of my best sleeping in the morning between snooze alarms.
I prefer to wake up in the morning with just enough time to jump in the shower, get dressed and get out the door. I don’t bother with breakfast, reading the paper, watching the news or any other typical morning stuff like many people do. If my hair isn’t still a little damp when I sit down at my desk in the morning, something must have slowed me down.
One winter, when I was attending high school in Wisconsin, I walked the short distance to school, only to find my hair frozen when I got there.
Even as a child I would fight to stay awake at night, and struggle to get out of bed in the morning.
But I think I really became set in my ways in college. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have anyone yelling at me to go to bed. If I wanted to stay up until 3 a.m., well, that was my choice.
It’s funny, I went to college to learn, but it wasn’t until I entered the real world that I realized that I needed to get some sleep at night.
Now, as I rapidly approach middle age, I still have sleep issues.
I do my best to stay away from things that will potentially keep me awake. I try and avoid caffeine after lunch so I don’t have the jitters all night. I usually read for half an hour before going to bed to calm me down and get my mind off of anything that might be bothering me.
I try to go to bed at a reasonable hour, I have a comfortable mattress and I don’t have loud distractions outside my bedroom like in the college dorms, but I quite frequently have trouble falling asleep, even when I am exhausted.
I can’t stand being tired, but not being able to fall asleep. When I finally turn the light off and am ready for sweet slumber to take affect, I want to drop right off, not toss and turn for hours.
It seems the more I struggle trying to fall asleep, the less likely I am to do so. What makes it worse, is the fact that I am aware of this fact, and try not to fight it. I get caught up in an inescapable logic loop, a mobius strip of eternal wakefulness. When that happens, my mind can wander down some pretty strange paths.
Last night was one of those nights. As the evening grew closer to dawn, I came up with the topic for this week’s Word From Bird.
Now you can see just what sleep deprivation can to do a man with an already off-kilter mind. |
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