Last week, a sleepless night got me to wondering what other people do when they can’t sleep, so the Wednesday prompt asked just that.
What do you do when you can’t sleep? How do you attempt to lull yourself back to sleep? What typically keeps you awake at night? How long does it take you to finally surrender and give in to wakefulness? How do you occupy yourself when you can’t sleep? Do you have a specific memory of one sleepless night? What happened?
Several people offered their experiences.
Sue Powers – I love sleeping but sometimes it’s a difficult state for me to reach. Lately sleep has become like the mythical land of Shangri La in the story Lost Horizons. It’s lovely to think about but hard to get to because my husband and I are temporarily stranded in the middle of moving from one home to another. We sold our old house very quickly so we crammed all of our stuff into a couple of over-sized storage units and my Mother’s garage. Once we cleared the payment and paperwork we bought a manufactured house but it needed work done before we moved in, so we have been residing with relatives while the work goes on. After all it should only be a week at the most, we told ourselves. Well, of course, a few projects turned into a couple more projects that all needed to be finished before the first project could be done…continue reading Getting Back to Sleep by Sue Powers.
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Betty Anthony – I have great trouble sleeping at all. I do not remember when it started but it is now a big problem. If I have a good night, it will be about 1:00 a.m., but most of the time it is close to 2:30 a.m. I start off knitting and watching TV. When I get tired, I stop knitting. If I try to turn off TV to sleep, my mind will not shut off, so back on goes the TV. I think my mind does not want to quit; time is going by and my brain is afraid to think that too much time will be spent in the not thinking mode. I miss the long sleep nights that I had and woke up so refreshed. I think I will start taking naps during the day. I still think my brain does not even want to take an afternoon off from thinking. I have got to figure out a way to sneak into my brain and shut off the go button to sleep button.
