3 Clever Ways To Endure Insomnia

[This gnome is there whether you sleep or not. How does that make you feel?]

I’ve lately been prey to waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep. I blame this on Satan, of course, and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God. It has nothing whatever to do with the fact that I haven’t worked out in weeks, and that my “cutting out of the carbs” includes the occasional quiet spoonful of lemon curd when no one is paying attention, and, well, that’s enough, isn’t it. So, because I’m not really awake and probably won’t ever be, here are three clever ways to endure the insomnia.

One
Try counting with some numbers and things and see how high you can get before you become confused and have to start over. You should be able to get at least as far as thirty before your mind wanders and you start to doze off at which point your executive function will snap back into action and your mind will fly awake and remind you to keep counting. Repeat.

Two
Try deleting email you don’t need any more. Fall into a quiet rhythm of delete delete delete. Rejoice as your thumb starts to slide to the side of your phone and your eyes begin to close. Snap awake as you realize three things–what are those things? Email?….Or Emails?–have gone into something called ‘Archive’ and what is that even. Now, fully awake, miserably examine each folder to see if you have lost anything, what’s that word? Oh yeah, important. Realize that deleting actionable and important messages in the middle the night is the worst thing you could be doing. Give up and start counting.

Three
Scroll through Twitter. Seriously, and keep scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling, and then jump over and look at trending news, and then go back and refresh your feed and keep scrolling. There will be, guaranteed, some interesting stuff in there–videos of puppies, crazy weird headlines, news about that book, what’s that book, the fire and the Trump? There will be strange out of context statements about everything from football (#rolltide) to how to promote your business in 69 easy to follow stops, plus a survey about biochemistry. Keep trying to take the biochemical survey, desperately pushing past the fact that you have no feelings whatsoever about this industry and don’t even know what it is. Don’t give up tho. Scroll your way through the night and into the dawn, and as the sun breaks over the hill and wends its tepid way around the bare branches and stubborn leaves outside your window, reexamine all your apps and ask yourself, say, “Why on earth don’t I have the kindle app downloaded in, I mean on, my phone?” Look mournfully around in the gray light and further ask yourself, “Why don’t I have a pair of headphones here so that I could have plugged my ear with the soothing voice of Davina Porter lilting her gentle way through interfering machinations of Isabel Dalhousie? Why? why….

But there will never be an answer. Rise up and face the day, man, you can sleep some other time.