Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: sleep issues

One last post about sleep–and a plan! (Maybe)

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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:


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I’m all about the (lack of) sleep

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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.


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One last (hah) post about sleep

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I have one more post to write about sleep. That’s a lie , of course. I’ll probably dealing with this all my life. Let’s just say I want to write another post especially because I foolishly decided to try staying awake for 72 hours. I had done it before at my then-therapist’s suggestion. I only lasted 62 hours before I succumbed to sleep. This time, I had reached 46 hours and told Ian I was trying for 72 hours. He said, “That sounds dangerous.”

Fortunately, I listened to him and Googled it. Of course it was dangerous–or at least ill-advised. Sleep deprivation was used as a torture method, for fuck’s sake. I thanked him for saying that and told him I’d go right to bed–which I did. Despite having drank around 15 oz of coffee and washed my hair. As I’ve said before, caffeine doesn’t do anything to me.

I woke up to a few messages from Ian asking me to let him know I was ok when I got up. I was going to do that, anyway, and I was touched that he was concerned about me.

I had already done most of my Taiji/Bagua before going to bed so it was an interesting day. I actually felt pretty good. I got roughly six hours of sleep, but it was solid. I did not wake up, which was unusual for me. And I felt pretty invigorated when I woke up. I will not be doing that again. I should have researched it before I tried it, but I was desperate. I put up with something for far too long and then when I do decide to do something about it, I rush in when I should maybe tread cautiously.

I am already up way too late. Ideally, I would like to go from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. K and I have talked about it in the past. Both of us are night owls (or at least were), but she had to get up at normal people time because she was a teacher. I, on the other hand, worked flexible hours at home, so I could go to bed and get up whenever I wanted. I’m not sure that’s a good thing because maybe if I wsa forced to get up, I would be more inclined to do it on time.

I’m lying. Or at the very least, I’m fooling myself. That was not what happened whenI was on a more rigid schedule. I’m talking about being in college and having classes at certain times. In my first year, I had a 7:45 a.m. class, which was torture to me. I did not go to bed until 3:30or 4 a.m., which meant I got about 3 1/2 hours sleep a night. Which was not even barely enough. Back  then, I was getting an average of five hours a night, which also wasn’t enough–but it was more than 3 1/2.


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Let’s talk more about sleep

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I have started my journey to stay awake for quite some time. Originally, it was going to be 72 hours, but I decided that was unreasonable. I was already so tired, and I didn’t think I could make it 72 hours. I will say the first 24 hours were easy. I got up around 10:30 a.m. yesterday morning because I had Taiji (Zoom) class at noon. Lately, I’m been going to bed anywhere from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. so staying up two more hours past the latter limit wasn’t that big a deal.

Oh, and around five in the morning,  I went to shut the curtains, and what did I see outside? A noticeable dusting of snow! In late April! My bestie’s birthday is coming up soon, and her metric for snow is that it has to fall before her birthday to be allowed. I messaged her letting her now that a light dusting just squeaked by her legal limit.

I love joking with her about snow and heat v. cold. She is a hot weather person (though that has changed since she hit menopause), and I am a freezing cold weather person (though that has changed somewhat since I hit menopause). Back when she used to live in Minneapolis, we would go out once a month or so. If it was in the winter, I would be happy as a clam while she was shivering (as we smoked outside. This was after smoking was banned indoors. I do not smoke any longer). She would look at me incredulously and demand to know if my spine was scrunching up.

“Nope!” I would say happily. In my youth, I played the fun (to me) game of seeing how long it would take me in the winter to roll up my window. Usually it was around -5F to 0 degrees. And then another ten degrees lower until I actually turned on the heat. In other words, I really fucking loved the cold.

My bestie, on the other hand, grew up in Miami. She thrived in the heat and humidity, and when we went to the beach in the summer, I would moan and groan like I was being asked to drag myself across the Gobi Desert. My other bestie lived in Raleigh for some years and visiting him in summer was the worst. Even after immediately taking a shower, I would be dripping in sweat once again.Ugh. I’m sweating just thinking of it right now.

How the hell did I–oh yeah. Back to sleep.


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Still sketching out my sleep agenda

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I’m back to talk more about sleep. Here is my post from yesterday in which I did talk about sleep and what I was planning to do (for once! I kind of stuck to the topic). I ended by saying I was planning on staying up for 48 hours, and the minute I typed that, I was so exhausted. I mean, I’m fatigued all the time, but there are spurts of extreme tiredness that lasts a day or two.

There are two ways I can go with this. One is to try the 48 hours staying up and no sleeping route. That is a very hard route. Going down that path would be me trying to keep adding to it and reaching 72 hours. That would be pretty difficult, but I think I could do the 48 hours. Maybe not right now because I’m so tired, but at some point.

The other route is just to sleep whenever I’m about to fall over without regard as to what time it is, which would be easier. I sometimes fall asleep in my chair at my computer, and then I do this weird (and aggravating) thing of sleeping for ten minutes, being awake for ten minutes, sleeping for ten minutes, being awake for ten minutes, and repeat.

I’ve also had it where I was watching a video on my laptop (lying on my couch), and I would have to repeat the same section several times because I kept falling asleep in ten-minute chunks. I was too stubborn to actually take a nap, though, because…my brain is broke? I joke, but not really. I would not say my brain is broken, but I would say that’s the way my brain works.

It’s so frustrating. I’m trying to accept that it’s not me being stubborn or a contrarian. It’s not me deliberately sabotaging myself. It’s how my brain works. That’s not to say that I have to just throw up my hands and say there’s nothing I can do about it, but I do think it would help if I didn’t view it as me being deliberately ‘bad’.

It’s difficult because that’s how I was viewed in my family–and how that kind of behavior is viewed by society in general. There is a narrow range of behavior that is considered acceptable, and woe be to the people who strayed too far outside those lines. These days, there seemed to be a little more tolerance of some divergence, but not much. It’s still a very narrow band of what kind of oddness is acceptable, and it’s rarely much.

I have mentioned the double empathy problem before, which is that it’s hard when autistic people and allistic non-autistic) people talk because of the very different mindset. Usually, it’s up to the autistic person to adapt and try to be ‘normal’ in order to fit into society. And if the autistic person doesn’t mask enough, they are excoriated for being weird, not trying, being rebellious, etc.


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More about sleep, martial arts, and whatever else

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I’m back to talk more about just how fucking tired I am. Wait. That wasn’t the topic of yesterday’s post? Well, it might as well have been. I got a decent amount of sleep last night–oh, by the way. Last night is when I sleep regardless of the time. For instance, I went to bed around 7:30 in the morning and got up at two in the afternoon. The former was my night and the latter was my morning. This is my late evening, and I’m going to try to get to bed before the sun rises–you know what. Let me be real with myself. I cannot fix the problem if I lie to myself. Or not lie, really, because I know I’m not being real.

Here’s the thing. After my medical crisis, I was able to get to bed at a reasonable hour, get a tight eight hours, and then go about my day. This was four-and-a-half years ago. I maintained that for about a year, and then it slowly started reverting back to my norm. If it had been all at once, I might have had the wherewithal to make myself stop. I can deal with disasters well–it’s the slow creep that causes me trouble.

It’s something  that’s common for people who are neurodivergent, apparently. That we are really good in emergencies/crises. There are a few reasons for this. One, we tend to think outside the box. Which means that we can come up with solutions that other people may not think of. Two, things that distress other people may not be as immediately distressing to us. Hm. I don’t feel comfortable talking about the whole neurodivergent populace, so I’ll just speak about me. While I’m anxious in my day-to-day life and about really trivial things like ‘was my tone in that email too curt?’, I am, quite contrarily, really chill and cool whilst in the middle of a crisis.

Things that would hit other people hard do not do the same to me. Or rather, I can still keep my head in those moments. Probably because my brain quite simply does not think in the same way as other people’s brain. For example, after 9/11, I just could not understand why people kept saying, “How could this happen in the U.S.?” To me, my only surprise was that it didn’t happen earlier. In other words, with all the shit we were doing, why wouldn’t other countries want to attack us?

Please note that I am not making excuses or saying it was justified–I’m just saying I’m not surprised that we got attacked. It happens all around the world, and it’s grimly funny to hear so many people think American exceptionalism meant that there was a protecttive bubble around us that would deflect any negativity that came our way. Again, I’m not saying it was justified or that it wasn’t shocking. I’m saying it wasn’t a surprise, and I could not understand why other people thought it was. Or rather, I understood on an intellectual level, but emotionally, it baffled me.


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Radically rethinking my sleep–and martial arts

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I have two things I want to talk about, so because it’s my blog and I can do what I want to, I’m going to write about both. Or one until I run out of steam and decide to write about the other one tomorrow. They aren’t directly related, but there are tendrils that grow out of each that entwine and become merged together.

Let’s starct with sleep. It sucks. The end.

Of course, that’s not all I have to say about it; I’m just getting started.

I have written about sleep so often, I’m begin to bore myself. But it’s getting worse, so I’m going to keep writing about it. About twenty years ago, my therapist at the time told me of an experimental treatment that was getting some attention. It’s to stay awake for three days (and nights) straight–72 hours in order to jumpstart your brain. (That’s a very grossly simple explanation of what it was supopsed to do.) When I tried it at the time, I made it roughly 62 hours before my bestie called me to say she had her baby–prematurely.

Follishly, I went to the hospital to visit them. I was out of my mind as I talked to K. I don’t remember what I said or if I even saw the baby  through the glass. I think maybe not? As I was driving home, which was the same as if I was driving home from her house, I forgot how to get on the last freeway I needed to travel to get home. When I got home, I went to sleep immediately. (I really, really, REALLY should not have been driving).

Did it jumpstart my brain? Not really. Do I think it’ll do it this time? Not really. But! I think it might interrupt the slide I’m experiencing as far as my struggle to get to bed at a reasonable time.

Side note: I do think there’s too much pressure to go to bed at a ‘good’ hour (which means before midnight I guess?) and to say that anyone who goes to bed after that time has a mental health problem. Yes, there are studies that show that people who go to bed ‘late’ suffer more from depression, but correlation is not causation, and I would wager it’s the other way around. (People who cannot  go  to bed before midnight get depression from trying to force their natural biorhythms to fit those of the world around them.)

That said, I would like to go to bed before the sun rises. I want to aim for 3 a.m. I think that’s reasonable for me (but not tonight).

Side note deux: I was watching a show in which the participants were talking about when do you conside the next day to have begun. These were night owls, andthey did not think of a new day beginning at midnight. I was excited by this because I have long given up that metric as the start of a new day. For me, it’s when I wake up–that’s the new day. Anything before I go to sleep is the same day. In the show I was watching, one person answered that anything until the sun rose was one day. Another said that if he was called anytime before going to bed to set up a meeting at any time after he woke up, that would be the next day, regardless of what time it actually was.


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Feeling pleased with myself

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Today, I had a private lesson. My goal was to focus on the Solo Long Form, but when my teacher came over, we started talking about other things as was our wont. One thing I mentioned was how much trouble I was having with my sleep. That’s not ususual for me in general, but it’s been really bad for me. My teacher suggested that when I could not sleep, I do a portion of the Solo (Long) Form until I got bored and ready to fall asleep.

One of her teacher’s teacher firmly believes that there is no style of martial art beyond human style. He also does his Taiji with his weight fully forward rather than 70% forward. That’s for combat rather than health, and I much prefer that. My teacher’s teacher has been teaching his students to practice by taking the first section of the form and taking five minutes to do it. That’s a really long time. A REALLY long time. I did it today with my teacher after she did it, and it was so hard. I spent over a minute on the preparation and beginning combined, and then I rushed the rest of the first half of the form.

This was an exercise to be aware of what you were doing while practicing and to really sharpen your focus. I was able to do the first section with seventeen seconds to spare. Not bad, but I really struggled to even do that well. I tend to go really fast, and if I do slow down, then I go waaaaaay too slow. To do it slow enough but not too slow is a struggle.

I also talked to my teacher about how difficult it was to not fall into the American trap of pushing yourself too hard at all times. Since I’d been writing about it for the past few days, it was at the top of my mind. I’m a bit frustrated that I forgot an easy move while teaching myself the Bagua Knives Form, and I vented a bit about it to her. She said that it was good that I had caught it at all and that it wasn’t any big deal. Intellectually, I knew she was right, but it still bothered me.

I also said that I felt envious of her two classmates, let’s call them Jim and Nicole, because they were both so dedicated to their weapons and so much further along than I was. The latter is the reason I really wanted to teach myself the Double Saber Forms because I saw her do it at the demo (right before the pandemic locked everything down). I was so impressed by it and by her every time she did a weapon form.

As for the former, I was blown away by him at every demo. The one time he subbed for my teacher, I was so intimidated by him. He worked on the Sword Form with us and asked to see me do something. i was so wowed by him, I made a mistake. He was so dedicated to the weapons, he invented a weapon form that was only him unsheathing weapons (and then ‘using’ one on a classmate before resheathing it). I was so awed by it, even if it’s not my thing. In addition, he made weapon bags, and the one I use was made by him.

When I told my teacher how I felt about her classmates, she interrupted me and said that she put me on the same level as Jim. I was gobsmacked because it’s most certainly not true. She added in terms of dedication to the weapon and my abilities. I think what she meant is that I had the same ability to learn them than he does, not that my current abilities are equal to his.

I was so flattered because I don’t think of it that way at all. It’s only within the last year or two that I’ve even had the courage to call myself an advanced student. Yes, sure, I am teaching myself weapons, but…well, I do’nt know where I’m going with that but.


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Why the fuck am I like this?

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I have sleep issues; I’ve had them since I was a kid. I still remember when I was six or seven, I would stay up until midnight to read. How? I would place a t-shirt in the crack under my door and then just use a flashlight to read under my covers. Ever since I was seven, I did not go to bed before midnight. I couldn’t. That’s just what I did. That’s always been my sleep pattern, and it’s not something that I can easily change. Any time I try to make a substantial change, I just find myself draaaaaaaagging myself back to my normal time.

The only time I slept a normal people schedule was when I was in the hospital for my medical crisis and for a few months after. Then, I was going to bed at 10 p.m. and getting up at 6 a.m. By a year after I had my medical crisis, I had reverted to going to bed around 2 or 3 and getting up eight hours later. I was the most rested I’ve been in my life. Granted, it took a major medical trauma to get me to that point AND tons of powerful drugs, but still.

I have tried to rein it in and go to bed at a more reasonable time. It has failed miserably every time. I have given up on it, but I’m trying to make sure I don’t go too much further in the sleeping late at night realm. Then again, I have toyed with the idea of pushing my sleep schedule forward to lap back to a normal people decent time.

I just can’t do it. I have tried and tried, but I just haven’t been able to do it. I can pull it back bit by bit, but then I’ll lose it all plus a couple of hours in the next night. So, let’s say I was going to bed at 4 a.m. I would be able to pull it back to 3:30 a.m. for a couple nights, then 3 a.m. for the next couple. I might be able to inch it to 2 a.m., but then a few nights later, it would be up to 5 a.m. again.

I am currently going to bed around 7 a.m. I’m setting myself a limit of 2:30 p.m. to get up, which means I’m not getting a full eight hours. Today, I had an appointment at 10 a.m., so I tried to go to bed early; I really did. I wanted to get to bed by 3 a.m. I think I managed five a.m, but just. I was going to get up at 9:30 a.m., but I woke up at ten to 9 a.m. That’s how I do when I absolutely have to get up at at any given time. And I’m still up. Why? because that’s just how the fuck I am.


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The weight of the world

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roast chicken, melted cheeze, and a bagel? yes, please!
Nothing like a bagel sandwich to brighten my day.

I am still thinking about how I might have ADD. Or not. Another symptom is the inability to get things done no matter how sincere the desire. I have this. For example, in preparing for my parents’ yearly month-long visit, I had a whole list of things I wanted to do, and I vowed to get started a month before they were to arrive (which is today). I make the same vow every year, and I fail every year. Why did I think it would be different this year? I have no idea. It didn’t happen, and even the things I did, I had to scale down form what I had planned on doing. There are several reasons for that. One, I’ve been dealing with gastrological issues for the past few weeks, and it’s made me have even less energy that usual. Which is close to none, anyway. TMI for anyone who doesn’t like to think about bodily functions. I had to deal with diarrhea on and off for a week. The first time, it wasn’t related to food because I know what that’s like. I eat something and a few seconds later, I’m running for the bathroom. That came later in the week, and it was because of tomato spaghetti sauce. At least that was my best guess. The first time, though, ti had nothing to do with food because I hadn’t eaten in eight or so hours. I was already feeling the effects of a migraine, and then I shitted my brains out. I was sitting on the toilet for half an hour, then I had to run back about an hour later for another half-hour round. That lasted for about three hours, and then I went to bed. I had to get up a few hours later to repeat the cycle, and it was the worst.

Now, the diarrhea is mostly gone, but I’m still having issues now and again, and also the opposite problem–blockage. Before I continue, I’d like to say that I love all kinds of foods. I will basically try anything once, and I used to live for spicy food.

Side note: I watch Hot Ones online, and Da Bomb is the sauce that makes everyone gag. It’s not their hottest, but it’s the one the guests are least able to handle. Why? Because it tastes like battery acid. I know because I’ve tried it. My brother and I had a years-long competition to see who could give each other the hottest of hot sauces. Da Bomb was from me to my brother one year, and I used four drops in a pot of chili that was too hot to eat. My brother called off the competition after trying this sauce. It’s made strictly to be hot and nothing else, and it’s doesn’t have any of the complexities of a good hot sauce. Anyway, I have to smile whenever it comes out on Hot Ones.

Now, however, my diet is very bland. The last few days, I’ve mostly been eating gluten-free crackers, rice, roasted chicken, and corn on the cob. I also am eating gluten-free bagels with either a meatless patty on it, corned beef, or roasted chicken–and melted Monterey Jack cheeze (Daiya). Citrus is still treating me right, so I eat an orange or two a day, and I squeeze lemon into my honey lemon ginger tea. Or plain gluten-free pasta with melted Monterey Jack cheeze and roasted chicken. I’ve cut out the sauce which is usually some kind of spicy mayo/mustard situation. I’ve also been eating spring greens with a mango chipotle dressing, but I’ve mostly cut out the dressing as well. I’ve had some soy yogurt with no issue. One night, I had the squirts, and I was terrified it was the rice. It can’t be the rice! I love rice, and as an Asian person, you will pry my jasmine rice from my cold, dead fingers. Yes, I know brown rice is better for you, but I don’t like brown rice. I may try to like it better, but for now, I’m sticking with what I know and like.

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