Impatient Idealist

Yesterday I started reading You Are Getting Sleepy, a book about lifestyle related approaches to insomnia. In the first chapter, the author asks some questions about the reader's experience of being unable to sleep. I now wonder if I don't have insomnia so much as I simply don't need a lot of sleep. (I do have bad nights. Many people do. But overall, five hours a night of really solid sleep actually sorta seems to work, and perhaps I should just stop worrying about it.)

Info for anyone else interested in the book: He writes about how various conditions are linked to insomnia, such as chronic pain, depression, etc. He asks the insightful question of which came first - do you wake up because you hurt, or do you hurt more because you're not sleeping well? Studies suggest the latter! But after that, he disappointed me by recommending all the usual sleep hygiene stuff, things good sleepers simply don't do. By his own thought process, good sleep hygiene should be evaluated as a possible cause of insomnia. Fah.

Anyway, I'm going to try to stop worrying about sleep. It seems I'm mostly okay.

Insomnia is a lot more boring (but more pleasant, for all that) without Facebook.

Woke up about an hour and a half ago for Yet Another Cleanup Party and boom, that’s it, no more sleep tonight. That’ll give me a total of three and a half hours for the night. Last night - hmm, terminology gets weird: Saturday night - it was about three. Another night or two of this and I won’t be safe to drive a car. Already the other day I caught myself waiting for a stop sign to turn green.

How do people deal with this kind of thing? (By “people” I mean “people with jobs they have to show up for at regular times”; I know how I would deal with it if I had flex time and sick days and the like.)

Wow but it's lonely at 4 am.