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).