Can’t sleep, and tonight/day, depending on where you are, seems a little worse than usual.
Coming out of winter, days getting longer, should be helping with the SAD and associated anxieties. Well, it has actually, but this year has been much worse with the stress of divorce.
Of course THAT stress has been heightened by the fact that the ex has decided to make this as aggravating as possible, dragging this shit out needlessly right up to the pretrial where she knows shit will really start to fall apart for her. There’s a lot more to that, I just don’t really care to get into it right now.
So, stress, coupled with SAD has seriously increased my natural tendency to have a little trouble sleeping during the late fall and winter into something that has negatively impacted my life in a serious way.
I should be sleeping right now, happy and joyful in the knowledge that finally a settlement has been reached and will be submitted to the court on Monday. I can see the *end *of the tunnel, not just the light. I will finally be freer to move on.
But, I can’t sleep, despite being so damn tired.
So, enough venting, who else is up who probably shouldn’t be?
Shit, I just realized I put this in the wrong forum. This is the kind of thing I’ve been doing a lot of this past 9 months that I chalk up to the insomnia
My sleep patterns have been screwed up for months now. It’s 4:16 AM I’m I’m stepping out to buy a pizza because I can’t be arsed to cook the food I have at home. My new job failed to work out for me and my back is hurting so bad that every cough feels like an ice pick in my spine. Oh yeah, the cough I’ve had for ten days and counting. It’s just a minor viral sinus bug but I’m still tired of it.
Oh well, I’m listening to The Roadhouse and getting ready to watch the sun rise with a pizza and a beer. There’s worse ways to start the day.
You live somewhere much more metropolitan than I, if you can just step out for pizza at 4am Alpha.
So what happened to your back?
My sympathies, also, for the cough. We had a round of flu go through my work place in spite of vaccinations. Luckily I had a very mild (compared to everyone else) bout of it but still took a while to get rid of the cough.
I live in a town of roughly 5,000 people in central Nebraska (Holdrege, zip code 68949 if you’re curious). It’s a nice enough little town with an all night Casey’s convenience/pizza/doughnut joint. They make a decent enough pizza at a good price but I always have to ask them to overcook the things. When cooked to their specs, they always seem a little doughy to me.
I have no clue what happened to my back. I certainly can’t point to any incident where I lifted, twisted, stepped or slipped and say, “That’s what did it!” All I know it that when I do range of motion checks, I get a sharp stabbing pain very low in my back. It seems to be getting better. One dose of aspirin when I get up keeps me moving through the day but I did have a few miserable days.
Well that’s cool, about the all night place. I wonder if you sprained it getting up off the couch/whatever. My first wife did just that, sprained her back getting up from the couch. The doc said its a pretty easy thing to do and a relatively common injury.
Stranger things have happened. It did give me a good excuse though to avoid the adventure a friend of mine set up for us. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed riding mechanical bulls. There’s a couple of bars in Kearney that will rent one for a weekend a couple of times a year. It’s not unusual for you to see me bouncing face first off the padding during these events, usually after consuming a few more beers than might be considered necessary. My friend was fully aware of my interest in this so he offered me the opportunity to ride a live bull.
Uhhm… no, …thanks. I don’t need P.E.T.A. to tell me that this is a bad idea.
Riding a mechanical bull is not an intelligent act. It’s not going to impress anyone I care about and accomplishes nothing worthwhile. With that being said though, on the list of activities that make a lot more sense when you’ve had a few beers, mechanical bull riding is fairly harmless. I’ve yet to see a mechanical bull throw a rider and then turn around and try to stomp the rider’s head into the mud. You might ache for a day after riding a mechanical bull. Trying to ride a live bull can ruin your whole day.
Just wondering if you have tried unplugging from the clock for a bit. Meaning you set your own sleep wake times regardless of time of day - and can go as far as removing clocks from your view.
There was a time when I did this and it did help reset things in terms of sleep/wake cycles. It also helped me to learn what to do when I do have trouble sleeping, which is to get up and be active, not expect sleep even if its 3am, and that’s OK. Sleep will come in at the proper time and I know my own pattern which naturally defaults to 2x day. Sometimes the body just needs to run on it’s own clock.
I’ve been having this same problem of sleeplessness. I can’t stay asleep. It’s a sometime problem for me but over the last week it’s been every night – except last night, when I took codeine for my chronic bronchitis, and except for a bit between 5:25 and maybe 6, I got 9 hours. Sleeping on codeine doesn’t really count as much of an accomplishment tho.
My project partner at work has been sleepless mornings likewise lately.
We were wondering if it was a seasonal effect. More light, warmer weather, and a generally uplifting and energizing time of year might also reasonably have the downside of making us want to get up earlier.
My gf has a history of sleep problems. While reading about insomnia I stumbled across research looking at lavender as a sleep aid. Out of curiousity I purchased a diffuser and a bottle of lavender oil. My gf’s sleep has improved dramatically.
Could be Napier, for me the longer days are therapeutic since I suffer seasonal affective disorder. I’m thinking I need to invest in one of those sunlamps and maybe switch out at least some of the lights in my house for the “full spectrum” or “natural” lights after this year.
When I go to bed, once I turn out the light it is fully dark in my bedroom. Dark blue paint, heavy dark window covering to block out the street light right outside, no electronic gadgets with led lights, phone screen off and face down. Usually if I’m not asleep with 15 to 20 minutes, I get up and go read (usually I read random threads here)
until I feel drowsy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. More often not the past many months.
Lavender huh? I’ll give it a shot, thanks for the tip kayaker. I’d never heard of lavender as a sleep aid.
Well yay, got 2 hoursish in, time to start the day.