I’m back to talk about sleep one more time. Here is the post from yesterday in which I talked about sleep, the lack thereof, and how hard it is for me to get said sleep. I’m still getting over my unwise decision to try to stay up 72 hours without researching what could happen if I had actually managed it. I mean, sleep deprivation is considered a method of torture for a reason. I will say I think it’s really funny that I was mainlining coffee when Ian messaged me asking if it was dangerous for me to stay awake for that long. I quickly looked it up and realized it was, then went directly to bed. I fell asleep in less than a minute.
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: caffeine does not affect me. I can drink it up to the point of going to bed, and I’ll still be able to fall asleep. As I just noted. In fact, I don’t know why I drink it in the ‘morning’ except that’s what you’re supposed to do.
I have realized that there is just no quick solution. Nor is there any easy solution. I can’t just snap fingers and suddenly be able to sleep well and at the proper time. It’s wishful thinking. I also can’t simply force myself to go to bed at a better time. I’ve proven that that isn’t going to happen, either.
It’s the worst feeling in the world to sit there watching the clock inch forward, knowing I should be in bed, but not doing anything to actually move towards that goal. It doesn’t help that I’m chanting in my brain that I should be going to bed. The other weird thing is how time seems to draaaaag and then suddenly leaps ahead. Time is weird. It just is.
I think another reason I’m having a hard time is that I’m just tired (no pun intended) of dealing with my sleep. I’ve been doing it all my life, and while it’s gotten slightly better and then got a whole lot better after my medical crisis (before slowly sliding back into bad territory). I am resentful that I’ve put so much effort into it for so little return.
On the third hand, it’s been at pretty disparate times, and I may not have put enough concentrated effort into it. I’m a pretty impatient person in some ways, and me trying to find ways to sleep was one of those ways. I did try so many things, but I don’t know if I gave any of them enough time to stick. The problem was that there were some negative results to many of the options, which made me reluctant to keep trying. For instance:
1. Valerian. It made my mind slow down to the point where I could not think straight. It was really unpleasant, and I quit after a few days.
2. Sleeping pills. I just could not wake up, no matter how many times I cut it in half (twice).
3. Warm tea/milk/bath. None of it works. At all. I suppose that’s not really a negative, but it was annoying.
These are the most common ones. Others just didn’t work at all, such at melatonin, exercise, etc. I suppose #3 in the list above should be here, but whatever.
Here’s the boring truth. Or rather, here is what I’m planning on doing. It’s going to be very boring, but if I can follow it, I’ll actually have a chance of maybe getting my fucked-up sleep schedule on, well, an actual schedule. My goal is to get to bed by 3 a.m. and get up at 11 a.m. A friend suggested I shut off my computer at 10 p.m., but that just isn’t going to happen.
I think that’s the key, really. I need to make it something that I will actually do. It’s good to have ideals, but if I know I will never reach them, than that’s pointless. Sure, it would probably be best for me to get to bed by 10 p.m.–wait, no. I firmly reject that notion. There is nothing magical about going to bed by a certain hour. I suppose you could say that’s true in general, then why am I bothering to try to set my sleep schedule?
Here’s the thing. I don’t think I need to go to bed at a certain time, but I do think I need to have a set schedule.
Side note: The weather has been so crazy this week. It’s gonne from 35F one day to 80F the next, and then back to 45F the next. This has thrown my entire system in whack, which is not helping with the sleep. I love cold weather as everyone knows, but I do not love cold weather flipping with hot weather day by day.
I think the weather is fucking with my sleep–not that it really matters at this point. There’s another suggestion I’ve read that while it may not help, it won’t actually hurt me.
Here’s the backstory: I have tried so many times to roll my bedtime back to little or no success. Even if I manage to push it back a few hours, it only takes a night or three to fuck it up again. So, one solution I have read about is to push the time ahead an hour at a time until you lap back to the time when you actually want to go to bed. In other words, if I go to bed at seven this morning, then I should aim for eight tomorrow morning, nine the following morning, etc.
I think that might work, but I’m just not sure I can do it. Then again, I’m going to bed later and later, anyway, so maybe I can? At this point, there’s really no reason not to try. This is something that cannot hurt me, and even if there’s only a five percent chance of working, why not? That’s how I feel right now. If it can’t hurt me, then I might as well give it a go. Taiji by itself helped in the past to get me from five hours a night to six-and-a-half hours a night. That’s huge! But I still need more than that.