Sticky

Mondays are sticky by nature. Tuesdays are not supposed to feel like this. I don't understand why this morning it was so, so dark outside. I wanted to cradle back to my bed with the alarm clock and sleep until noon at least. It has become evident that 6 hours is not enough sleep. And I woke up last night in the middle of it all. Between Sunday and Monday it was even worse. All this after a good and fun weekend - although Sunday with the presidential elections was probably a bit too exciting. O well...

The failure of minimal hours of sleep

Forget what I said somewhere before: 6 to 7 hours is not enough sleep. I seriously thought for a week or two that it's quite alright, but it's not, with it's additional 3 or 10 hour nights. The stress at work has been quite bad, but it doesn't explain my constant tiredness and difficulty of getting up in the morning. And I do exercise too, and I think I'm falling for someone slowly but surely (that I can sleep with as well), and still those positive things don't seem to balance my life at all.

Last night was the third in a row with it's steady 6 hours and I feel quite dead. Excuses include deadline days at work and wanting desperately spend time with someone I really like despite of the tiredness and work load. I'm not tired when with him. I can sleep with him quite well. Except for the reasons that Bonnie Prince Billy so well describes in his Lay & Love (and mind you, I'm not exactly quoting him here, "love" is quite a strong word): 

"From what I've seen you're magnifient

You fight evil with all you do

Your every act is spectacular

It makes me lay here and love you

...

From what I know, you're terrified

You have mistrust running through you 

Your smile is hiding something hurtful

It makes me lay here and love you

It makes me lay here and love you

I'm filled with violet and red and blue

I've got a feeling from what I do

That you might lay there and love me too"

And here's the song itself. Heard it last night in the film This Must Be the Placeby Paolo Sorrentino. Funny how such a nice feeling as this effects sleep, well, a negative way. On the other hand it cheers up like nothing else and makes you overcome everyday obstacles with that "I can do anything" hype.

Life vs. Sleep

Let's be honest here: why keep a sleep diary, if you don't update it every day? The whole point of this project was to find out why I don't sleep, and when I do, it's irregular and not the healthiest option with the weekly variation between 3 and 11 hours (+-2 hours in both ends).

I guess the most obvious reason is that eventually I got tired of writing the same thing every single morning. There was apparently something wrong with my sleep hygiene - as they love to call it - as well as with my living habits. Those two haven't really changed. I still have the same bed, same room, same linen, same nighties, same woolen socks (okay, I do change the last three from time to time). I still have to take melatonin at least twice a week. My life is as irregular as ever. I try to find some routines, but then I realise that I don't really want them in my life. There's enough routine at work, so when I'm off, it has to be unplanned even if it's planned. Which apparently means sleeping is the first to suffer.

The time from Dec 20th to this moment has been interesting and turbulent, and I've even managed to sleep relatively well considering that so much has happened. A lot of good stuff has occured so far (I know I know, I'm jinxing it now), and I'm quite certain it will eventually come back to me. On the other hand I'm not imaging it to be any more or less than it is, so maybe, just maybe, it all evens out in the end and I get to be happy just a little bit, a little longer. That means more sleep, more smiling in the middle of the night, more dreams.

Hopefully also getting back to Of Sleeping more regularly. After all sleeping is so much more than having insomnia. It's just that the lack of something makes you think about it a lot more. Just like with Hank Williams' Rambling Man, here presented by Cat Power as a Woman:

"Well I love you baby

But you got to understand

When the lord made me

He made a ramblin' woman"

Less sleep, better sleep?

It was only this morning as I woke up at 4.37 and was unable to fall back that I thought of something: maybe I just need less sleep than I think I do. My living habits and sleeping is so irregular that I constantly think I need at least 8 to 9 hours each night when it actually could be that I've been reaching for the impossible all the time and feel tired just because of trying.

I'll get back to this and other things hopefully later today (this week). Now I'm off to try something totally different: running on treadmill in this condition (approximately 5 hours of sleep - in pieces of 1-2 hours).

"Sleep is the new sex"

Hours slept in the past two nights: 5 + 4

The headline is stolen from The Cool Hunter's Facebook status update, but somehow it is more than appropriate today, every day. There was pretty much the same idea in my entry from November 1st. I just can't get enough, I just can't get enough... sleep. Even when I sleep 7 or 8 disjointed hours per night.

These dark times of the year normally don't effect me - except for the fact that melatonin doesn't seem to work anymore. Damn.

Last night I experienced the once-quite-regular night frights again. I have to dig deeper into those some other time, but to put it short, they are not nice. I get them before I try to fall asleep or in the edge of sleep and they wake me up, completely. It's like having a small heart attack or have a vein pop out in your brain, except you find out that you're still alive and horribly tired...

I don't know how Charlotte/Beck's disco/clap clap song connects to anything said here, but it's a bloody good disco/clap clap song!

Darkest hours

It's the darkest time of the year and I should be more sleepy than usual. But no: even last night, after two doses of melatonin, I kept waking up every two hours. In the morning I simply gave up and got up. And yes, I feel horribly tired. I'm just not sleeping.

This is different kind of sleeplessness than before. I am in a way more calm (see previous entry), but at the same time I have no energy. I do the bare minimum and that's it. Too bad it seems to apply to sleeping as well. Last weekend I thought "well isn't this great, I have the whole Friday - Saturday night for myself and my bed."

I was up by 9 a.m Saturday morning. And I didn't feel rested at all.

Saturday was all for football, beer, a pre-X-mas party and meeting friends, so that night doesn't really count. You would think that Sunday night I'd be in bed by 21h.

Stayed up until midnight, hovering between conscious, sleep and dreams. Got up at seven after waking three times during the night.

This is clearly not fair. It's dark. I want more sleep. (Bon Iver's Calgary dreams to follow:)

Simple enough solution?

The last draft for this blog is from November 11th and it began like this:
"Sleeping while travelling is another funny thing. Normally the first night after arriving you are so tired that sleeps comes easily. The second night is more tricky, because of all the excitement over seeing new places and things - and sleeping in a new bed..."

I'm still signing all that and I think that writing about insomnia (or for me most of the time: the lack of it) while travelling is important, but now it's been a little bit too long, so I'd be able to grasp it elegantly (haha) right now. To put it shortly, I was away with a family for five nights, four days. I was quite stressed about the trip, and also about other things in my life before and after, so I basically didn't sleep at all during that trip. You can just imagine how exhausted I was when I came home and had to be back to work the very next day. It's almost like not "being there" at all. I was also stupid enough to have left all melatonin pills home.

But to be honest, the main reason I haven't written for a few weeks is that I've met someone that I both like AND I can sleep with. And yes, that's what I mean, exactly. I haven't "met someone" in a sense that I'm going to marry him next week - we're not an item, there's no serious gf/bf thing going on. And yes, by "sleeping" I actually mostly mean sleeping! Naturally that's not the way it started, but let's just say it's a very, very good side-effect of the whole relationship - and for the sake of my sleeping problems I DO hope that's the way it'll be for a while at least, because it's a good thing for me. (And he's a nice and interesting enough guy, which is a huge bonus.)

Funnily enough, I actually sleep better (and more hours!) when alone too - which means, most of the week. It must have something to do with relaxation, which is a bit odd, because at work or other parts of my life things are not any less hectic. But we'll see. I'm of course quite scared that by writing about it I'm jinxing it. Let's all hope not.