It's 2:20 in the morning and I'm writing a blog post. I've struggled with staying asleep (and occasionally with falling asleep, sometimes in the same night!) for several years now. At first it was just a couple of weeks in the summer but for the last couple of years it's been a problem from spring through fall. I'm not one of the fabled short-sleepers who can get by on 4 to 6 hours per night. I need 7 to 8+ hours per night in order to feel rested. So I go around in a sleep-deprived state for more than half the year now. This is particularly unsafe, especially since I drive to work every day. Also, I really hate feeling like this. I feel slow and groggy and like I just can't get my gears unstuck.
I read a study (can't remember where) that short-term sleep-deprivation didn't affect performance on projects that required intense concentration, but it seriously and negatively affected projects that required limited concentration. You know, like driving or writing an email, which I do daily. But I wonder if they had volunteers who were sleep-deprived over longer periods if they would have seen even the projects that required intense concentration suffer. Or maybe I'm just trying to justify my errors to myself.
I've read several books over the years and I've picked up lots of tricks to go back to sleep. I keep relaxing Celtic piano music and nature sounds with embedded delta waves on my phone. I also have both the white noise and lightning bug apps on my phone. So I have lots of listening choices to help me to drift off. I've found that stretching my legs sometimes helps. Sometimes getting up and sitting on the couch for a few minutes until I get cold helps. Sometimes doing deep breathing and relaxation exercises helps. And then sometimes (like tonight) none of this helps and I give up and read for awhile.
Two years ago I reached a point where I decided to try sleep medication. It worked pretty well for me and I didn't have any of the interesting side effects that I've read about like sleep-eating or sleep-adventuring. But it made it harder for me to fall asleep without it; and I just really HATE to take unnecessary medicine. I'm pretty hard-pressed to take pain-killers unless I've had a headache for a long time and/or sleep won't cure it. So while that worked out alright for me, it's not something that I'd like to do again. Plus the other thing that can be hard is that most of the time I'm so tired when I go to bed that I fall asleep just fine. Then after about 2 hours I wake up and can't get back to sleep. In that case it's too late to take sleep medicine, so the only effective method is to take it preemptively before I even know if I need it, which is definitely not how I want to use medication.
So for the time being I'm just going through my litany of tricks and hoping that something will eventually help me to fall back asleep. We'll see as the summer wears on if I still feel the same way. Usually late in the summer I reach a point where I'm so tired all the time that I feel just about ready to give up. If I reach that point again we'll see if I'm still so opposed to the medication. Well, I've sat up for nearly 45 minutes now, I'm going to try and go back to sleep. Wish me luck! Although actually, never mind, I hope that you're asleep and can't wish me luck if you're reading this in any American time-zone!
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