On Being a Terrible Sleeper
I’m bad at a lot of things. I’ve talked about many of them already: math, flossing, not procrastinating…there’s tons more, but, this week I wanted to write a little bit about my insomnia.
I’ve been a night owl for as long as I can remember. At some point, though, I stopped staying up as late as possible because it was fun (and all the best shows were on after midnight, shout out to Adult Swim and Toonami! I know my fellow millennials know what I’m talking about) and started staying up simply because I couldn’t sleep.
During the day, there are unlimited distractions. From what’s on TV, to what’s on your phone, to what’s going on outside your window. There’s music, books, work, video games, cooking, cleaning, and on and on and on. I love all of it. I love being distracted, even when that distraction isn’t particularly entertaining. My problem, is that when it’s time to go to bed, when the lights are off and the world is quiet (or as quiet as it can be living next to the 101 freeway), my mind refuses to just chill the hell out.
It’s when I’m lying in bed that my brain decides to unleash the tsunami of creativity that I’d been hoping for all day. It doesn’t matter if I just spent six hours trying to write, all the ideas (good, bad, weird, whatever) just start pouring out as soon as I lay down. To be honest, most of the topics for these essays have come to me somewhere between 2 and 4 in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting inspired and I love coming up with new things to think about or write about…I just wish they would come to me at literally any other time of day (or night)!
So, needless to say, when my brain is going a thousand miles per hour, it can be a little bit challenging to fall asleep. Or at least it was, until I started listening to rain while I slept. I tried every sound imaginable before finally settling: ocean waves? Too sporadic. Train sounds? Too many dreams about The Polar Express. City-scape? If I wanted to hear someone peeling out and doing donuts until they hit a parked car, I’d just open my damn window. But the sound of rain? It’s perfect. It’s just loud enough to draw your attention away from your own thoughts but quiet enough to let you sleep andit’s monotonous enough to lull you to sleep without just being a wall of sound.
Babies often times have noise machines in their rooms to help them sleep… so, why ever take that away. Isn’t the ideal to “sleep like a baby”? I know it isn’t perfect, and I still often find myself lying awake at 3:30am wondering why anyone would name a dairy topping “sour cream” but it’s a lot less often thanks to the wonderful aural blanket of rain sounds.
What about you? Any other insomniacs in the house? What do you use to help you fall asleep?
My cat likes to sleep on my chest. When she starts to purr I can feel my blood pressure fall and I’m drifting off to sleep. Unfortunately she likes to go outside around 2:30 or 3:00 and wakes me by screaming in my face. I’m up for the rest of the night.
My being a late night person began when I didn"t do my homework. Staying up late delayed the morning and facing the music. Compounding the problem was my stint working at the Pizza Wagon, famously owned by the Peterman family. Work till early morning, play golf at dawn, sleep the rest of the day, and repeat.