Tag: insomnia

I can’t get no sleep

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With apologies to Faithless.

I’m hopeless without sleep.

One night without sleep is unpleasant, but I can handle it.
Two consecutive nights without sleep finishes me. And I can confidently state this, because this morning, after two consecutive nights of no sleep, I am finished.

Ironically, we watched a documentary last night on insomnia, so now I am finished and I know the scientific reasoning why.

I could have gone to bed early last night, and it probably would have been a good idea, but United were beating Wrexham in the FA Cup and so I had to stay up. And even having allowed a sufficient amount of time to allow the adrenaline to exit my system (or so I thought), I couldn’t get to sleep, and when I finally did, I couldn’t stay asleep.

Today will be rubbish, but at least there will be several (or more) hours of good sleep tonight.

There simply has to be.

Day 237 – Dragging

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I didn’t sleep much last night. I thought that I was going to sleep well, because I was about to fall asleep on the couch in front of the football so I chose to go and do it in bed (careful now), but by the time I’d sorted the beagle, locked up and got upstairs, I was wide awake. Wiiiide awake.

Lot and lots going on in my mind. My health insurance people would have had a field day.

Things stayed like that for about four hours. And then once I did get to sleep, I woke disappointingly early and lay there for another 1½ hours… just thinking.

I wouldn’t advise it. It’s left me feeling like a zombie today, and yet there were all the things that the awake me should have been doing today, still to be done. What a disaster.

I’m long overdue a “catchup” night, whereby I… er… catch up on my sleep that I’ve missed over the last n nights. I’m very hopeful that tonight will be that sort of night. I need it. Especially as my son has just asked me to explain the formula for compound interest:

Normally when in this condition, I’d fob him off with an “ask your mum” or a “come back tomorrow and I’ll explain”, but she’s not home and he actually has a maths exam tomorrow, so I used the last of my brain power to try and talk him through it.

That’s why this blog post is so poorly written and disjointed.

There’s literally nothing left. I’m so sorry.

Day 70 – Did not sleep

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A proper night of lying awake. Checking the clock, wandering the bedroom, considering life, the universe and everything.

There was no good news. Sorry.

It’s left me a bit broken this morning. I have managed to tip coffee all over my right hand in an exhaustion-induced move that was distressing because of both the pain and the wastage involved. In addition, it turns out that one can’t absorb caffeine through one’s skin and so there was no benefit in my mood or general responsiveness. I’m going to try tipping some more of it down my throat just now and see if that makes any difference.

After yesterday’s brief return to data capturing – a task I really didn’t understand just how much I didn’t miss – I’m moving on to bigger and better things today. Obviously, there’s a quiz to write (there’s always a quiz to write), some sorting out to do in the garden, some schoolwork and a Scout badge to assist with and – hopefully – an exciting new project which will result in a more stable website experience for everyone even vaguely connected with 6000 miles…

And then one more thing to look forward to. Bihari are doing deliveries and I am absolutely here for that. No jalfrezi on the slightly limited menu, but plenty of their really decent alternatives. “No Cook Thursday” just became a thing – for today at least. And assuming that I’m able to stay awake until they arrive with my curry.

UPDATE: Booked the curry. Life is good again.

Computing

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Recently, I have found myself awake a lot at night. I have been known to go through patches of insomnia now and again in the past, but this has been going on for almost two weeks now. It follows on from my trip up north, during which sleep was necessarily at a premium, and after which I banged out only the second 12 hour slumber since I moved to SA. That was great, but it was the last decent night’s sleep I can remember.

So what’s the issue here?

My best guess is computer exposure. I have been sitting in front of a screen for several (or more) hours each day, and I think that my system (as in my body system, not my computer system) has forgotten how to manage that. It’s just not used to it anymore and one of the effects is not being able to sleep, even when I’ve switched off the laptop by 8pm.

And then once I’m not asleep, my mind really kicks in with all of the thoughts necessary to keep me awake for quite literally hours on end. Important stuff, trivial stuff that it thinks now should be considered important, a full analysis of why I’m not sleeping and just how much sleep I’m not getting, wondering if I should set up a phone farm, and myriad concerns over who I should pick for my fantasy league side for the upcoming season.

I haven’t been paying much attention for the last couple of months.

I’m due a catch up night, and I have high hopes that it might happen tomorrow. The situation is currently manageable, albeit with slightly slower reactions and a slightly shorter fuse than normal (but I have a pretty long one anyway) (careful now), but will soon become untenable if things continue this way. Thankfully, if all else fails, draft night is on Tuesday so I won’t be able to worry about my picks for much longer anyway.

But then suddenly, it’ll be the real thing on my mind. Oh goodness.

No sleep til Sheffield

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(With apologies to the Beastie Boys)

After a particularly sleepless night, this post – shared by Signe Rousseau on Facebook – hit home particularly hard. In fact, everything seems to be hitting home harder than usual today. Eina.

Every aspect of who you are as a human, every capability is degraded, impaired, when you lose sleep. What does that mean? Your decision-making, reaction time, situational awareness, memory, communication, and those things go down by 20 to 50 percent.

What was I saying? Oh yes. I’m not with it today and I’m about to head off on a 13,000km, 23 hour journey this evening.
Fortunately, I’m letting someone else do most of the driving.

Happy daze.