There’s something about those square numbers on a digital clock … that ugly electric red … and when the numbers are<\/p>\n
– arggggghhhh – just knowing how little sleep I’ve had\u00a0makes me even more restless.<\/p>\n
And once the mind starts going, it’s all over.<\/p>\n
It’s like an ear worm from a song, except your whole brain’s talking and the tune isn’t catchy.<\/p>\n
For the longest time, more than three months after my surgery, I was sleeping great – eight or nine hours. Even when I woke up, I’d just turn over and go back to sleep. I thought I’d licked the insomnia thing.<\/p>\n
First, I started waking up after seven hours. Then after six. Now five.<\/p>\n
Some small thing wakes me up, and then I’m aware that I’m awake so I go to the bathroom, and then my brain just starts working.<\/p>\n
As though it didn’t get enough done during the day.<\/p>\n
It’s not caffeine or sugar or alcohol. I’m only drinking alcohol and coffee on weekends. I eat almost no sugar or refined carbs of any kind.<\/p>\n
I’ve tried taking a warm bath before bed, drinking milk, eating almonds, but none of that helps. I don’t have trouble falling asleep; I have trouble getting back to sleep.<\/p>\n
I do think that Daylight Savings Time contributes to\u00a0the problem. It’s like having jet lag for seven months.<\/p>\n
You’re in the wrong time zone and your body knows it.\u00a0But I’ve usually adapted within a couple weeks of the time change.<\/p>\n
Back in February I had developed a nice routine of doing things to deliberately relax, several times a day. Then my routine went to hell.<\/p>\n
Stress really piled on when the plumbing <\/a>went out\u00a0and my attention was constantly being whipped around like a wind sock in a hurricane.<\/p>\n It turns out to be not great\u00a0that\u00a0my\u00a0couch became my office<\/a>. Having my work computer in my face all day and all evening is not good for peace of mind. I’m starting to just work all the time.<\/p>\n I also have been busy\u00a0at work. As my brain has started getting up to speed, I have gotten frantic about catching up with all the time I lost.<\/p>\n Because I got busier, I stopped meditating, and even stopped my “10 minutes of doing absolutely nothing” breaks.<\/p>\n At least I kept exercising, which alleviates stress. But exercise is something of a chore even when you enjoy it; it isn’t deliberate relaxing.<\/p>\n In the last few days, when insomnia has been the worst,\u00a0I’ve also been too busy to do art in the morning. Something I swore I would not do.<\/p>\n All day my mind has been busy, busy, busy. I went for a walk, touching the wildflowers and talking to birds, and tried to drain my mind.<\/p>\n I’m looking at my glass pieces with longing. But it’s 10:40 already and I’m tired.<\/p>\n I should\u00a0now do nothing for 10 minutes.<\/p>\n Can’t. Have to finish this blog post. And get ready for bed.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There’s something about those square numbers on a digital clock … that ugly electric red … and when the numbers are 4:53 – arggggghhhh – just knowing how little sleep I’ve had\u00a0makes me even more restless. And once the mind starts going, it’s all over. It’s like an ear worm from a song, except your … read more Restless<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[518,881,882,883,112,537,62],"class_list":["post-7579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-habits","tag-insomnia","tag-relaxation","tag-routine","tag-sleep","tag-stress","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7579"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7585,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7579\/revisions\/7585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}