random thoughts – Day 1,615 – (Monday) – sleep issues

Sunday night featured another episode of what has been happening at least once a week for too long. There was a focused effort to get to bed at a time that would allow for seven to eight hours of sleep. Once in bed, there was the trap of just one more Duolingo lesson, just one more check of Facebook, and just one more chapter in the book club selection for September. That sucked up at least an hour of quality sleep time.

When the light was finally turned out I was tired but not sleepy. There was relaxation breathing like we used to do in yoga classes. There was enough tossing and turning in an effort to get comfortable that it should count as a workout. 

It felt like I was awake all night. After a brief nap, a noise in the street woke me up after 1:00. It wasn’t even loud, but the window was open for the night air and someone whispered just right and bam, there I was, wide awake all over again.

Sleep not.

There was more tossing, turning, and flopping around on the bed. On the right side. On the left side. On the back. Later, rinse, repeat. There was an acute awareness of my right leg. Not the full-blown aggravation when the sciatica kicks up or the pain of the occasional leg cramp. It just felt not right. After a couple hours of it, I was thoroughly pissed off. 

It was nearly impossible to not obsess over the time. The check of the time I recall was around 2:00, and thankfully, sleep finally happened. What felt like five minutes later, the alarm on the cell phone bleated to awaken me from my nap. I wanted to fling it across the room. The app for the fitness tracker declared four hours and 17 minutes of sleep for the night. It's a mostly cool feature, but sometimes it seems that it's better not knowing how little sleep was had.

Despite the tragically short sleep, I wasn’t dragging ass too badly and the workday went well. Maybe it was the pot of the magical life elixir from Maxwell House that powered me through the day.

If the pattern that has been repeating much of the summer holds, I’ll sleep well tonight and maybe for the next one or two nights. Then, it will be another dreadful night of tossing and turning all over again. Ugh. Maybe the next time I can't sleep I'll start a spreadsheet to log the sleep time and moon phases and whatever other factors I can toss into the mix. If only I hadn't gotten rid of the economics textbook that used to bore me to sleep in grad school. Live and learn.