Big Ideas in the Night

So what to do at 2:30 -4:00 AM when sleep won't come?

Explore a few blogs, of course.

I started out with Violins and Starships, where I thoroughly enjoyed Lynn's posting on Colonizing the Stars.

That of course, led me to Steve Barnes's post over on Dar Kush

which led me to Suzanne's writing over at Susannagig.jig

In her posting dated November 11, 2008 she names 3AM as a favorite time of day and writes lyrical prose praising the hour.

Ok. Maybe I can quit cursing the fact that I am awake when I would rather be sleeping and make my peace with appreciating what these middle of the night pockets of time have to offer?

Easy to say - hard to do when I know I have a LONG day ahead of me and I will be dragging dead tired with not enough rest.

Sigh.

So many blogs...so little time

HMMM, it has been a whole week gone by now with me neglecting this little blog. High time I got back to it, eh? I have several other blogs that lately I've focused a bit more attention on, but this one is close to my heart, so I can't give up on it entirely.

Most of my energy lately has gone to my newest blog, "Adjunct Lounge" for the community college where I work. That one's private, open only to invited readers so that instructors can freely discuss issues about classroom managment with no fear their student will stumble upon it. We don't use names (FERPA rules), but we can use examples that are pretty telling...so it's important it stays out of the public arena. I've rather enjoyed designing it and exploring link land to discover all sorts of cool resources to include.

Then of course there is the Waters of Mormon blog that I contribute to. We've had a few interesting topics going on over there.

Occassionally I still find something I want to post over at Life by Design.

And there's another one that I've been experimenting with for a totally different kind of writing that what I do here...it's still a work in progress which may or may not link back to this at some time.

Someone asked me recently how I manage to keep up with all these blogs (plus the ones I read regularly) AND hold three jobs (my primary full time job for Oregon community college, teaching two online classes for Washington community college and now also teaching face-to-face adjunct classes in Oregon on evenings/weekends). The answer is simple. I simply don't sleep. If I ever get my insomina thing figured out I may be doomed.

On a High Wire Without a Net

After months of battling raging insomnia I finally decided to cry uncle. I've tried long hot baths, herbal tea, lavender candles & body lotion, soothing music... all that sort of stuff. But it's no good. I manage to get to sleep just fine. But then somewhere between 2-4 AM my eyes pop open, my mind is racing and there is NO WAY I'm getting back to sleep. I go for days upon days utterly sleep deprived until I'm goofy. I keep saying when I get tired enough I will sleep. No. When I can no longer stand it I just crash - not sleep - but collapse in a twitching pile of goofiness that makes no sense. Not good.

I've been extremely resistent to taking any sort of sleep meds. But after this last most ferocious bout of the big eye, I finally decided to cry uncle. So I called up my primary care provider to see if I could get a referral to the local sleep clinic for a full evaluation and possibly a short term prescription.

I was told she no longer works there - moved on to the VA some months ago. Didn't I get a letter? NO. I did not.

So now, not only do I not have anyone to help me with the sleep ickies, I have no one to do my annual exam or to turn to in the event I get sick. I'm back at square one with no medical professional that I know or trust.

I have HUGE issues about picking doctors. I've had horrendously bad experiences in the past with a doctor who spent the whole time she was examining me talking in detail about OTHER patients (not using names, but hey - we live in a small town and I'm not stupid, so it's not all that hard to figure out...). I wrote a letter of complaint for which I was labelled as a "problem patient".

After a long, long time with no doctor at all my pal Juliana took me to see a Nurse Practitioner she trusted. I was delighted to find a good match. I am seldom sick so I did not go in often. But it was very comforting to know that Eileen would be there any time I needed care.

Now she's gone.

I'm feeling frustrated, disappointed, nervous and scared. I do NOT want to go get poked and prodded and asked questions by somone new I don't trust.

Besides which, most the good doctors in this underserved rural areas are no longer taking any new patients. So I'm stuck. Do I play Russian Roulette with my healthcare by relying only on the walk in clinic? Yikes, that feels too creepy for words. What to do? Go back to the yellow pages and throw darts?

If I were looking for a therapist - which I most definitely am not - I would have the option of calling several, having a brief phone call to get a feel for what sort of services they offered, and then do screening interviews to find the right fit. But MD / DO doctors tend to say "take it or leave it" and consider their time too precious for that.

I really hate having to start over. This stinks.

How's your REM?

I've spent some time exploring a website by a group called the DREAMS foundation, with the word DREAMS being an anachronism for Dream Research and Experimental Approaches to the Mechanisms of Sleep.

Anyone who knows me well knows I have struggled with insomnia for many years. I've had several people tell me there is a sleep lab in a town nearby where I could go get evaluated and possibly helped, but I have been extremely reluctant to do so. In the first place, I just don't like going to doctors for any reason. In the second place, I'm not willing to define my insomnia as being "something wrong with me" that needs treatment. I prefer to merely view it as a characteristic, like the fact that I have blue eyes or long toes. I notice it. I don't have to name it bad or wrong.

When my body gets tired enough, it WILL eventually sleep. Granted, sometimes I go through cycles of several days on minimal rest. But I cope.

Lately, however, I've been thinking more about the different states that my mind experiences. I've been comparing how I notice, perceive and interpret things when I am well rested to when I am very tired, or when I am just about to fall asleep, or when I am first waking up. Why is it that sometimes I am quiet and reflective, other times I am brash and bold, or other times other ways? How much does my sleep cycle have to do with that?

I find it interesting that I can sleep straight through a major thunder storm but I am awake instantly if a baby in the next room simply coughs. But then, on closer examination, only CERTAIN baby's sounds trigger that instant attention. Guests with babies who I feel so particular responsibility for are far less likely to wake me up, even with loud crying that those babies who are flesh of my flesh. How does my mind know the difference?

Then there is the whole world of dreams and what they mean. My dreams are some wild equation, part memory, part symbolic metaphor, part longing, part mystery. I remember them for a brief, fluid time when first waking up and then they disappear.
There is actually an International Association for the Study of Dreams which has been holding conferences for twenty four years now where serious academic papers are presented on the topic.

I'm not one to give too much credence to my dreams. At one point I kept a dream journal, writing down key aspects of my dreams when I first woke up. I have not done that in quite some time.

I have a hard enough time figuring out what my waking life means, I'll leave the dream world analysis to someone else!

Why They Call it Lunacy

I've been thinking some on the way bodies and minds and ocean currents are influenced by the phase of the moon. From tides to menstrual cycles to cycles of psychotic breaks, much of the flow of this world in somehow connected with lunar patterns. Why is that? From almanac listings of best days to plant to days or nights when fish are biting, the craterous rock in orbit around us seems to have an awful lot of say in our affairs. How might things be different if we had two or three moons instead of just one solitary rock? Can a moon have moons of it's own? If that were the case with us, would earth be the "grandplanet" (like grandparent) to the moons of our moon? How would earth be different if our moon were bigger or smaller than it is? I see several ways our moon effects us. How does earth shape conditions on the rock? Are we in symbiosis? Or just happenstance?

Why do I care? (yep, you can tell when I hit day 3 or day 4 in my insomnia cycle...the old grey matter starts drifting any ole which way.)

INSOMNIA

I've tried laying down in the quiet and the dark.
I've tried drinking warm milk.
I've tried taking a bath in lavender water.
It's no use.
Sleep remains elusive.
So I read, I write, I listen to music, I let my thoughts roam...

I've never understood the concept of counting sheep.
Where did that come from?

My body is tired. I'm on my fourth day of not enough z's.
But the brain has other plans....

So it goes.

I wonder sometimes who else is up in this dark night... what imaginations, what machinations, what plots and perils and ponderings are bouncing around among the stars?

Perceptions of even the most mundane sensory input become so convoluted in the middle of the night. As one AM slips into 2 and then 3 my brain gets fuzzy and I begin to think of all sorts of ideas that SEEM so credible at the time only to burst like soap bubbles in light of day.

Don't give the girl any matches or sharp objects after midnight - she's not to be trusted.