tuesday, july 24, 2001
brain overdrive

i am operating on far too little sleep today. see, i went to bed at 4 a.m. no big if i had gone to sleep right away. i've been known to manage fairly well on 4 - 5 hours of sleep, 5 - 6 is more ideal, but i can get away with 4 in a pinch. but i didn't go to sleep right away. it took 2 hours for my head to unwind enough for me to pass out. and then i was up at 8:30 and actually out of bed at 9. so if i was lucky, i got maybe 3 hours of sleep. 3 hours doesn't cut it. 3 hours means i can't think the next day, i have no idea what creativity is, i am barely coherant.

and i had so much planned for today.

my problem is my brain, it just doesn't shut down. and i don't mean i think about one thing and worry it to death, i think about dozens of things at once. i once did a stream of consciousness writing for 5 minutes and i covered at least 2 dozen completely unrelated topics in that amount of time. this is my distraction in my add: my head just won't shut down, it won't stay focused (at least not for long). i have brain overdrive and even medication doesn't control it all the time.

trying to get to sleep is the hardest thing in the world for me to do. sometimes i have to be so damn tired thati don't so much go to sleep that i pass out. saxy has told me that once that i happens i am totally gone and nothing will stop it, but it doesn't happen very often at all. i have always been like this, so now i usually don't even try to go to bed before 2 a.m. i've always had this problem and now, both because of my head and habit, i can't go to bed before 2 a.m. because it is absolutely pointless to do so. i won't get go to sleep before then so why bother.

i really wish i was one of those people who could get to sleep in 5 minutes. my ex could, my last boyfriend could, my current husband can. me? nope. 5 minutes would be an absolute dream. but even when i am tired it takes at least 30 - 40 minutes to get to sleep.

what's worse is when i am settling down to try to sleep is when my brain really goes into overdrive. this is when i get my best ideas for writing, or for my game, or for my website, or for...well, you get the picture. sometimes i have to get up and write the ideas down because i know they wll be lost, and this sets me back at least another hour (not counting the time to actually write down the idea). it is incredibly frustrating because i know if i don't write my idea down i'll lose it, if i do write my idea down i lose even more sleep. if we had a night light of some sort in the room i might keep a notebook by the bed and write down a brief note to jog my memory, but we don't and i won't turn on the overhead because saxy is sleeping by the time i hit the bed.

it is so frustrating.

one trick that i have tried in the past is to tell myself stories in my head. i can usually focus on a story that is imaginative, but if i make it something i have told myself before (and still keep it visual) it will give my mind something to focus on and let my mind wind down and gradually put myself to sleep. this is not fool proof, especially if the story takes a turn that gives me a new idea, but it does help more often than not.

then there are the nights when i am just so wound up, when there is so much going on in my head, that nothing helps.

seeing as it took 2 hours to get to sleep last night, it must have been one of those nights.

i would really like to have a new brain. one that will let me sleep when i want to. i am not asking for 5 minutes, a consistent 15 or 20 would make me happy. anything but 2 hours. i really don't see that as too much to ask.