sleep

Sleep deprived and caffeinated

/ Alex Whitehall / 2 Comments

This has been an interesting week.

I had no problems coping with the time change Sunday. And yet, Sunday night I couldn’t fall asleep, and when I did I had the previously mentioned bad dreams and my hours sleeping were not restful.

The rest of the week was fine sleep-wise, but I never recooperated. So yesterday I took a half day and came home for a nap and to relax and rejuvenate. Last night I go to bed…and I’m wide awake. I nap all the time in the afternoon, it really shouldn’t have this effect on me. I stayed awake until 2:30, fell asleep, woke up at 3:30 having had a creepy dream, and then dozed until 6:30. To say the least, my plan backfired.

So now I feel about the same that I did on Monday, except it’s Friday, so more bearable. I’ll get through today, hopefully be exhausted and collapse at a reasonable hour tonight, and maybe my sleep cycle will kick back into gear.

I could really go for a nap right now, or another couple hours of sleep, but instead I’m going to dose up on tea (my zombie brain is saying “caffeine” in the way that zombies do) and hope I don’t over do it. Thankfully I don’t think I have too much to focus hard on at work, so if I get the jitters, I’ll just annoy myself.

Side note: I’m wearing my Carebear shirt to work today, per request. It sorta looks like this (in a broad stylistic not color or image way):

Creativity gone too far

/ Alex Whitehall / 1 Comment

Perhaps it’s time to cut back on the writing, or perhaps I need to write more, I don’t know. Last night I tried to sleep and my brain was buzzing with books I’ve read and stories I’m writing and I couldn’t sleep. When I finally drifted off, my dreams were vivid and fantastical, with invisible monsters stealing souls which were returned by guardians. I’d almost like to write about it, but fear I cannot do the monster justice.

To say the least, I survived today only through the blessing of chocolate and painkillers. Between doing real work, I wrote about wolves and romance and the strange country they meet in. It kept me awake, though I doubt it’ll do much to help me sleep tonight. Need to be competent tomorrow, have a meeting about web content. Motivation is minimal.

Sometimes, when running bare foot and fleeting and alone, you feel graceful.

Tired of this darkness

/ Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

I woke up yesterday from 8 hours of sleep and was tired.

“Well,” I thought, “It’s snowing and dark and Monday, it’s to be expected.”

My energy picked up once I was home from work and all was well.

I woke up this morning from 8 hours of sleep and am tired.

It’s still dark, no longer snowing, and no longer Monday. I have my tea (and a twang of pain in my throat). And I remember, “Yes, this is the darkness of Winter that makes me want to call out of work every day of the week.”

It also makes me want to sleep ungodly amounts. If it wouldn’t make me feel lazy as sin (and probably make me wake up at 4 am), I would absolutely come home from work and sleep. I wonder how long I could sleep if my body weren’t on a schedule.

I think I need to do some more meditations. My body is in that restless state again. Freaking out. The war is going to start soon. I don’t know if I’m ready.

As if sleep were an option at this point.

/ Alex Whitehall / 1 Comment
Last night was horrible.
To sleep would have been release, but I remained
ever aware of my pitiful state.

Last night was terrible.
The warmth only coming
from within.

Last night was unbearable.
To know it would be the longest
of the year.

Last night was futile.
Remembering how alone
we really are.

Last night was miserable.
Singing lullabies until I slept
tears still in my eyes.

This is not a poem, this is just me rambling in a poesy sort of way.
It’s especially cold today, I’m not sure if it’s because last night was so bad, or just the change in weather. But it’s cold. So very cold.

I know the dark is lifting now, each day grows longer.
And yet I can’t help but think how the dark is still growing all around me.

When that which you don’t have is gone

/ Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment


I’m exhausted.
I went to sleep around 11, because lately I haven’t been really tired at night, even though I get sleepy for large chunks of the day, including yesterday.

I woke up around 2:30 with unbelievable pains. I don’t know when I finally fell asleep, but I lost at least an hour. And it was so painful (before the drugs kicked in) that it drained energy from me, so what little sleep I did get was lost.

Of course now is the time when I made a promise to cut back on chocolate (1 pc a day…not including cookies, because that’s not fair to the holiday spirit). So now I feel like crap. Even more crap than I did when I went to bed.

In other news, I saw the end of Hogsfather which was good. I didn’t realize it was a Terry Pratchett book made into a movie (I missed the opening sequence when I started watching it the first time). It wasn’t OMG awesome, but it was amusing, and I enjoy the actor who played Jonathan Teatime. Wiki had this to say “In the Hogfather, Mr Teatime is played by Marc Warren. Warren plays Teatime with an American, and more specifically, a New England accent, partly based on Johnny Depp‘s version of Willy Wonka.” As soon as I saw it I thought “that’s very Willy Wonka-esque.” Good to know I’m not the only one, and that it has some purpose. Plus, the behavior works very well for an assassin..

I’m really not looking forward to this week, since I’m already tired and I just feel uninspired (and rather empty inside). And when I read things to make me happy it just makes me sad and lonely. So, to say the least, not looking forward to this week.

I both love and hate the holidays.

Exhaustion by any other name….

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It started friday night…

I went to bed at 1 am and woke up at 5:30…no reason, just couldn’t sleep. I napped through out the day, but nothing really restorative.

Saturday night was better, but restless, I kept waking up and having weird dreams.

Last night was about the same, though finally from 2-6:30 I slept fairly deeply.

I hope this sleeping problem doesn’t continue. I’ve always depended on sleep as one stability in my life. I also hope it’s not because they turned on the new lamps on my block (which are bright as fuckin’ day). Or, if it is because of that, that I may learn to sleep with the light again, even though I just learned to adjust to sleeping on absolute dark (and that I sleep better that way). Or curtains, I suppose.

So this week is starting of with me being groggy and sore. Awesome.