Before I start, let me just link to my post about sleep from yesterday here. I don’t want to stress about it, so here it is. When I was in college, I used to sleep four hours a night and then crash for fifteen hours my first night home. It was as if my body was saying, “Oh, I can sleep now? I’ll show you sleep then!” I’m sure it’s quite common–the body breaknig down when it’s safe to do so. I mean, you HAVE to sleep at some point or the body will rebel.
I bring this up because I woke up at 5:30 p.m. today. I was very disoriented and shocked. That was ten hours of sleep–which does not happen to me unless I’m sick. But I’ve really been skimping on my sleep the past month or so, and this was my body’s way of saying that it needed more.
I did not know why my alarm did not ring because I had set it before i went to bed. Or rather, I turned it on and just assumed it was set correctly because it was the day before. I’m talking about an ancient manual clock that I’ve had for probably three decades. I have no idea how it went from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Side Note: I have this weird thing that I do–I set all my manual clocks in the house (and my car) to different times. I have no idea why or how that started, but I’ve been doing it for decades. So the fact that my alarm clock was set at 8 p.m. meant that it was acttually set for 7:17 p.m. Why? No clue. I’ve been doing it forever, and it’s something I consider a harmless idiosyncrasy.
Side Note to the side note: One could spend their whole life trying to fix their flaws. The list is endless, and there’s always something that can be improved. However, something I learned a while back was that there’s a difference between an indiosyncrasy and a flaw. The latter should be worked on whereas the former is fine. Really, it is. We all have things that make us unique, and many of those things are harmless. My having my manual clocks at different times is one of those things.
Another thing I used to do was if I saw one of my clocks being on the quarter hour, I had to count to twenty-five as quickly as possible. Even as I was doing it, I realized that it was silly and not something I should be doing. My therapist at the time asked me what I thought would happen if I didn’t count. I didn’t know, but I was sure it would be terrible.
I managed to wean myself off it just by…not doing it. It was really hard at first, but it got easier after time. In the last month or so, I’ve caught myself starting to do it, but I usually can stop myself. Usually. I’ve slipped once or twice, which isn’t too bad. However, it’s discouraging that it’s coming up again after I haven’t done it in decades. It’s the stress of the last few months, I think. What with being in an occupied city and all. Probably lack of sleep as well.
I know what the solution is for the sleep problem. Well, at least something reasonable that I should try. It’s to cut off screen time at a ‘reasonable’ time. I put reasonable in quotes because it’s still not going to be anything close to a normal time. I will consider it a win if I get to bed consistently by 4 a.m. I will consider 3 a.m. ideal–something to work for. That means turning everything off at 2 a.m., doing a bit of slow Taiji and whatever else I need to do to get myself in the right frame of mind to sleep.
Maybe a shower? Yeah, that might help, too. Although I have never found a warm bath/shower to be relaxing, it certainly can’t hurt. Right? I’m at that point where I’ll try anything that might help as long as it won’t hurt. (I had to add the latter bit because of my attempt to stay awake for 72 hours–which stopped well short of it when I found out it was, indeed, dangerous.) A friend suggested doing something like crocheting or reading. I don’t do crafts, so that’s out. Reading, though? I have not done that in a while, and I would like to get back into it. So I will try to find an actual book (not Kindle) that will be perfect for reading before sleep. Which means probably not a murder mystery, though they don’t really affect me that much.
I used to fall asleep to a podcast, but I have stopped doing that. I want to see if I can sleep without it because it can’t be good to always have noise in the background. I do it to combat the noise in my brain, but I just don’t want it to be a 24/7 thing.
I have tried hot herbal teas, too, but they don’t help. Again, they don’t hurt, but I have not found them to be helpful, either. It’s hard to know because I try things sporadically. Not meds. I’ve tried those faithfully, but they did not work. When I tried sleeping pills, I could not wake up. I cut it in half, and I still could not wake up. I cut it in half yet again, and still had a hard time waking up. That’s when I decided that sleeping pills were not for me.
Look. I want to sleep, yes, but I also want to wake up. I don’t want to feel groggy while I’m awake. I’d rather get less sleep and have it be solid than get more sleep and be groggy when I wake up. It’s the same problem I had when I used to fly. I get terrible motion sickness, so I used to take Dramamine for it. The problem was that it would knock me out for way longer than the flight. I would be groggy the first few days I was in the new place.
Then, I learned about ginger and it changed my life. Seriously. Taking ginger as I flew instead of Dramamine made such a radical difference. It didn’t make me sleepy at all while curing my motion sickness and nausea. It really was a miracle–. It’s not often that I’m handed a miracle–uh, never mind. (Given that me being alive is a miracle, it’s probably more prudent not to finish that thought.)
More tomorrow.