Tag: insomnia

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Writing Again!

Behold! Me, dithering endlessly over word choices at my local coffee shop.

For years, I struggled with insomnia. Exhausted after maybe six hours of fitful sleep, my busy night brain interfered with each day’s productivity. Sleep hygiene didn’t really work. Sleepy teas and warm milk? Nope! New pillows? Nah. What has helped me most to get nine hours of sleep each night is THC + CBD + Zoplicone (a prescription sleeping pill.) Working alone, the prescription didn’t work, but between that and visits to the dispensary, I’m finally back on track.

I’m working away on a fresh draft of She Once Made a Man Swallow a Key. Stay tuned, and in the meantime, please do give my many other books a try.

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Racing down the spiral

The Night Man is me.

I suffer insomnia. And I do mean suffer. This is a list of some my thoughts from last night’s fugue. It could be a flow chart that loops back on itself.

  • Bedtime! Got to bed early! Great!
  • Not sleepy.
  • Not sleepy. Sigh.
  • Patience. The trick to falling asleep is to neither try nor not try. Do or do not, there is no try. Thanks, Yoda, you little green fuck.
  • Calm. Patience. You’re an expert in relaxation, Rob. You can do this.
  • In “Jenny from the Block,” why does she sing, “I used to have a little, now I have a lot”? If she’d sung, “I used to have a little, now I got a lot,” that would be better. “Got a lot.” Rolls off the tongue and pleases the brain. I mean, why? Her artistic choice, sure, but why?
  • I need help. Hypnosis app. I go through a sequence. The free hypnotic sequence was better than the one I paid for. Grr.
  • Not sleepy. The walls are alive. When I see my sleep specialist in a week, will he review all the health dangers of poor sleep? Will he go over all the sleep hygiene shit I’m already doing? I ruminate about how my brain is, at that moment, shrinking.
  • Deep breathing…progressive muscle relaxation.
  • Random thought intrudes: How many cast members of MASH are still alive? I remember the street I was on and the angle of the sunlight on the morning a kid in my class mentioned the name of the show on our way to school. I asked, “Is it a TV show about potatoes?”
  • Let it go…let it go. And now I’ve got a Disney song in my head. It’s a good song, but not now, Queen Elsa.
  • Elsa. Else. Elsewhere. Elsewhen. I want to be elsewhere and elsewhen.
  • An editorial question is revisited. The editorial question bounces back and forth in my brain in a hypothetical argument that will never happen. Resolution = zero.
  • Second hypnosis app. Nothing.
  • They say Adderall can be a recreational drug, but isn’t it more a work drug? I mean, if I got Adderall, would I finally clean up my office? That would make my wife love me more. The smart drug from Limitless doesn’t exist but, hey! Where can I get some Adderall for which I do not technically qualify except, look at me right now! Gee-Zuzz!
  • Is there a podcast called Limitless? Good pod name. I should look that up. Maybe they have some good ideas. I wish I had a podcast called Limitless. However, I am feeling extraordinarily limited and sorry for myself.
  • Self-pity is not attractive. Add that to my list of things I dislike about Rob.
  • How much time has elapsed? Is it 3 or 4 a.m.? It’s 1:46. What? Really? Only 1:46 a.m.? Shit!
  • I should put socks on. Body temperature/sleep theory says that might help. Sigh. I lie there, thinking about it.
  • Eons pass. Mountains erode. Seas evaporate. The sun explodes. The heat death of the universe ensues. The universe contracts back to the size of a softball again and another Big Bang shatters the void. I see all of Time as a heartbeat and every single Big Bang is the pulse of all existence. An endless, meaningless existence in which Time is a flat circle on infinite repeat.
  • Was Nietzsche fun at parties? I bet he wasn’t.
  • But then there’s the whole multiverse thing. Don’t even think about that, Rob. You know how you get.
  • Will they really make the Spider-Man movie where Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield come back to play Spider-Men from alternate universes teaming up with Tom Holland? That would be sweet.
  • Eons did not pass. It’s only 2:06 a.m. Deep breathing…nope, nope, nope. Did I eat something today that makes me this way? Why am I like this? I’m pissed. Is this mania? Not clinically, but it feels like I’m on the same continuum.
  • I should put socks on, but then I’d have to turn on the light and that can trigger a wake cycle and I’m trying to get into the sleep cycle aaaand…now I have to pee.
  • I don’t wanna get up, but it’s not like lying here is working, anyway.
  • Get up, pee, get socks, back to bed. Wait.
  • Is the pillow a thousand degrees? It feels like it’s a thousand degrees. Turn pillow to the cool side. Still hot. How am I going to get any work done tomorrow?
  • Toss. Turn. Patience wanes. Fuck Adderall. I need to be knocked out. Where can I get those darts they use to tranquilize rhinos? Where’s the nearest zoo that has rhinos and how good is their security?
  • Give up. Facebook. Twitter. Email.
  • No one’s emailing me in the dead of night because they’re all asleep. How I hate and envy them.
  • Fall into an Instagram rabbit hole of Karens harassing people just minding their own business. View of humanity plummets.
  • Back to Twitter. News. View of humanity plummets further. I have the Iron Man fantasy again where I get the armor and fuck up some people who desperately deserve it.
  • If I were in a different state of mind, I could actually get up and use this time to write dozens of books. It doesn’t work like that, though. In this state, I’m simultaneously overstimulated but my head feels foggy, as if I’ve been bingeing a five-day marathon of golf tournaments. I fucking hate golf.
  • Golf. Remember that time that guy cornered me at a wedding reception and asked if I was interested in golf and I said, “Fuck, no,” and he told me his golf story, anyway? Review how to kill with the stem of a broken wine glass.
  • Sleep is needed. I should try again (and yet, somehow, not try.)
  • I’ve helped hundreds of people battling insomnia but I can’t help myself. I don’t make enough money. I don’t do a lot of things I should. I could do a lot of those things if I could just get a good night’s sleep!
  • Self-recrimination isn’t helping. You knew it wouldn’t, Rob, you moron! Let’s review every mean thing anyone has ever said to you or about you. (I have an eidetic memory for that.)
  • I want potato chips. And chocolate ice cream. Maybe find a way to combine the two that isn’t gross. But that would require intravenous injection.
  • If I get COVID-19, I have to get a block of plywood by the hospital bed so I can knock on it to ward off the disease. That’s unquestionably the stupidest of my superstitions, and yet…
  • One and a half nanoseconds later: What if, instead of piling food on a fork or spoon, we put each food category in a line on a long plate, as if we’re doing cocaine, but with snow peas?
  • Editorial question revisited on a loop. Pointless. Nobody listens to Rob. If I were thinner and taller and not named after a felony, people would listen.
  • “Got a lot!” I mean, the rhyme is right there, J.Lo! Jesus! This aggression will not stand!
  • Watch an interview with a new Black Panther in which the reporter seems well-versed in the organization’s history, but totally focuses on whether to carry weapons to a protest instead of even nodding to their noble work in community activism to feed and care for people who were otherwise forgotten.
  • 3:30 a.m. The bed is lava. Despite the fan, I am magma.
  • Give up, get out of bed, and move to my backup bed in the basement where it’s cooler.
  • Toss. Turn. I am a turbine. Hook me up and I will power the planet.
  • I should be sleepy by now and yet I have the nervous system of a squirrel.
  • I make a mental note that I should write these thoughts down in a blog post so I don’t have to think them again. That’s how I’ll let it go.
  • Shit. Disney’s back.
  • Nah, don’t bother writing it down. I’ll probably forget half of it by tomorrow. (I did forget half, and yet, here we are.)
  • 5-something, I think. Finally sleepy. At some point tomorrow, I will easily fall into a sweet and delicious nap that will not be denied. I’m not supposed to sleep during the day, but it’s nap or die.
  • Sleep is finally creeping in at dawn, a turtle in a race that all the happy rabbits finished long ago when the night was young.
  • Eyelids like heavy weights. Good…good…let the hate flow through you.
  • And here she comes, on a loop as my brain cranks up again. “Got a lot! Got a lot!” GODDAMN IT, J.LO!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nCswWuyShg
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One of my favorite sleep hacks

Unless you’re a cat, you need to sleep more.

I have a sleep disorder but I manage it most nights pretty well. There are plenty of ways to improve your snoozing (and I cover more in my book Do the Thing! so please do pick that up and enjoy.) It’s important to sleep. We need rest and very few of us get enough.

Here’s one of my favorite sleep hacks:

  1. Use your alarm clock but not in the way you’re thinking.
  2. Set a bedtime, just like when you were a kid. Make it the same time every night and make it early enough that you get more time in bed to sleep.
  3. Set your alarm to tell you when to get ready for bed.
  4. When the alarm goes off, go to bed.
  5. If you set your bedtime early enough, you won’t need your alarm clock to wake you up. Waking up to an alarm is a terrible way to wake up anyway! Who ever thought that was a great idea? Unless you’re a firefighter, waking up to an alarm makes no sense.

For these and many more tips on stress, pain, energy and time management, go read Do the Thing! now.

And go set your alarm before you forget!

~ Robert Chute writes visionary science fiction, apocalyptic epics and violent crime thrillers. When he’s not doing that, he’s a biomechanic who helps people with stress and pain management. Check out his weekly podcast to help with your life management issues.

Want a time travel thriller to read before bed? Check out Wallflower, the only time travel book that features Kurt Vonnegut as a character (unless you count Kurt Vonnegut books.)