Insomnia and the Quest for Rest

 I think it’s safe to say that everybody needs rest. Everybody needs to go to sleep. Every creature that we observe on earth spends at least part of their day curled up, snuggled up with their eyes closed and their little heads in the clouds. It’s a beautiful peaceful feeling, and it can be very frustrating if when you lie down on your Soft little pillow and close your eyes to go to sleep that you find yourself waking up instead. And for some reason, it seems to work pretty much that way I can be feeling very sleepy. I go in to lie down to go to bed pull up the covers turn on the fan, turn on my brown noise, but next thing you know, my eyes are wide open and I begin that circular syndrome of  “oh no” I can’t get to sleep. Well, what I have discovered is that it’s that moment of  “oh no”that is really the problem. The fact is that I don’t really need to go to sleep. I only think I need to go to sleep and it’s the thinking I need to go to sleep that starts to mess with my head. It’s thinking that oh my gosh I need to go to sleep. What am I gonna do? I’ll be so tired in the morning that keeps me awake it’s not that I’m really worried about anything. I’m actually just worried about going to sleep so what is the solution? Don’t worry about it. Don’t try to go to sleep. So this is what I do. I find ways to stay busy. I find ways to make use of my time in a more productive way and this way if I’m gonna be awake, it’s just like being awake during the day I’m busy doing something. So instead of calling it insomnia, I’m just gonna call an extension of my beautiful day. I decided to put this blog post in my suddenly single blog because when I was married, I was much more aware of my insomnia for many years. There was much more pressure to get up. I was just an absolute you had to get up in the morning to go to work. I worked two jobs for at least 30 years and it was great. I would wake up, get dressed, have my first cup of coffee followed by many more coffees throughout the day. I enjoyed it, I thrived on it, but now I wonder how I did I do all that and also live a family life as well? Yet somehow we did, my wife and I both worked two jobs, but now that I’m retired and now that I’m suddenly single the pressure to get up to go to work is no longer there. I still get up early on occasion to go bike riding and now occasionally to go hiking, but on average, I don’t have to get up early for anything. People might think oh you’re retired. You can sleep all the time. Well that ain’t gonna happen either. I just don’t. I’m not a sleeper so what do I do? Well, that’s the subject of my most recent video podcast. I play games. I play the game. I then take a screenshot of the solution and then I usually share that with somebody else I know who plays that game this way it’s somewhat of a social experience as well as being a do it on my own timeframe suddenly single experience so here’s the podcast and I’m sure I’m gonna do many more on this topic.