sleep

To celebrate turning 31, I decided to try and adopt a vaguely human schedule. Six months of being sick followed by three months of unemployment leads to a lot of waking up only just on the right side of midday and not a lot of consequences for doing so, and that's not so compatible with my new desire to actually work and make myself useful.

I've been suffering from mostly mouse-related insomnia for about a year at this point. During our first winter in this house, a mouse started paying intermittent visits to my room, scurrying and rustling and attempting to get at any food that might happen to be in my room except the stuff with the poison in it (it was an upsettingly smart mouse). If I could hear it in my room, I couldn't sleep. At first putting all the lights on would send it back to wherever it was coming in, but soon it learned not to be bothered by that and it would be in and out all the time. It finally left me alone when I got a sonic repeller and the traps downstairs have turned up a couple of mice since, so I'm pretty sure it's gone now. However, from this months-long experience, my insomnia learned a great new game called Was That A Mouse?

Insomnia: Was that a mouse?
Me: No, that was the plastic bag I put stuff in just before I got into bed.
Insomnia: Was that a mouse?
Me: No, that was something outside.
Insomnia: Was that a mouse?
Me: No, that is just what it sounds like inside my ears.
Insomnia: Was that a mouse?
Me: No, that was literally nothing at all.
Insomnia: We should listen extra hard with our whole body on full alert in case that nothing develops into a mouse.

It got to the point that I could only get to sleep by waiting until I was so tired I could cry, and then plugging in headphones and playing something on Netflix. Then Netflix started doing this thing where if I was actually watching a show it would continue to judge me by asking if I wanted to carry on after two episodes, but not bothering to do that if I'd fallen asleep, so it would just play an entire series straight and wake me up a few hours later when my brain tuned back into it. I have no idea what the Netflix logic behind this is, so I've no idea if I can change it. What I did know is that I was getting very little sleep but spent all day feeling like I was about to drop down where I was. If I tried to go to bed early, Insomnia Voice would pop right back up. I tried to get some sleeping pills that had worked for me before, but the doctor would only concede (and then very reluctantly) to give me a quarter of the dose I used to take, which is too weak to actually do anything.

My recently-implemented plan is called Schedule Shit at 9.30am and Hope Things Adjust. Right now I have a massive sleep deprivation headache, but I have plans to be out of the house at 9.30am tomorrow regardless. I will be able to exist in the normal world with the normal people, dammit.