What does growing up entail? Insomnia.

As a child I lulled myself to sleep by imagining myself into the fiction worlds I inhabited by day.  I was Ishmael and Frodo and I was Luke Skywalker and the Great American Hero. 

I visualized myself to sleep through my teens.  Every night I strengthened my muscle's memory by ceaselessly starting my swing: load the back leg, close the front shoulder, keep the head steady, uncoil the hips.  Again and again until a zen-sent sleep settled down like rain.

College was spent perfecting my jump shot: turn the knees in, center the thumb, cock the arm, roll off the index finger.  Sleep came quick and stayed sound. 

Insomnia took me when I started grad school.  How could I inhabit a fiction after years of being trained to do exactly otherwise?  What use was practicing swings never swung or shots never shot?  My nights were spent studying the ceiling while writing essays or chapters in my head.  I would exhausted but awoke with plenty of material. 

Now I simply brood about that which I can't control: students, budgets, jobs, Darfur.  When I do drift to sleep I dream I'm at a Halloween party dressed as an uncle's experience of last year's Christmas party after the LSD kicked in.  I am Rudolph in the body of a psychedelic Christmas tree.  Its needles chafe my skin.  On my nose is a bright hot bulb and I have tied a menorah to my head for antlers.  The bulb glows brighter and hotter and the world fades into crimson.  I am awake. 

It is 2 a.m.

I drift off again and am late for class.  I arrive to see my students armed with bows and arrows.  They want to win this archery competition but I have yet to teach them which is their dominant eye.  I stare blankly at them.  I know I know nothing of archery and so do they.  But they play along because they want to win their grade then everyone is screaming because someone has shot someone and there has been a death because I didn't teach them what they needed to—and I am awake again.

It is 2:30 a.m.

I study the ceiling and wonder how other scholars manage sleep.  I tell myself I should write a post about it . . .

Comments

[The Modesto Kid]

I never attended grad school. I've had insomnia on and off all my life, but never worse than when I was in high school. Moving out of the family house seems connected in my memory to being able to sleep more regularly. Brooding when I can't sleep is mainly about how am I going to get to sleep -- I just can't think about anything besides that I can't sleep.

[Ahistoricality]

I haven't had insomnia in years. Mostly because I'm so short of sleep, generally.

[A White Bear]

I have had lifelong insomnia that presents as an obsession with delivering lectures. From the time I was a child, I would lie awake most of the night composing lectures on books I was reading. I had never heard a lecture on literature, so I suppose they were probably more like sermons (and I composed several of those, too). I planned to be a scientist or a doctor, so I don't know what I was imagining these lectures for. (I was also painfully shy and couldn't imagine talking to a group of people.) But eventually, when I started teaching, it meant that I never prepared written notes for lectures; I just composed them before falling asleep whether I wanted to or not.

Of course, lecturing is considered pretty undesirable by the pedagogy of our times, so I try to keep them short, but I am an absurdly good lecturer. My skill is not wanted! The only thing that keeps me from writing lectures is playing a little solitaire (or sudoku or Tetris or other boring little solo game) before bed, and my brain invents games of it to solve while I try to fall asleep. Very annoying, yes, but boring enough that I eventually sleep.

[Mike S]

Whenever I've had insomnia, it's been because I cut out something important from my daily routine. That hour at the gym; that hour of playing guitar; that conversation with someone important I've not seen in a while -- these seemingly mundane yet calming rituals must somehow counteract the fears, anxieties, guilts, etc. that produce sleepless nights.

Maybe time to lace up the sneaks and play a little hoop, Scott.

[Rich Puchalsky]

You might try this technique:

1. Find a reasonably well crafted reader-ID fantasy, of the type that you would have liked as a kid, but neither particularly YA nor of any real literary value.

2. Re-read it. Then re-read it again.

3. Keep it by your bed. When you can't sleep, pick it up and start to re-read it. Drowsiness should occur within minutes, if not before you actually get the energy to open it.

4. You can sometimes change which book it is, but only when you have time to re-read it once during the day.

If that doesn't work for you, there's always massive amounts of sleeping pills.

[Sisyphus]

:)

(hands Scott a sleeping, purring cat.) Take two of these and some boring essays to grade that need to be back the next morning and I guarantee you'll be asleep in no time!

[Ahistoricality]

1. Find a reasonably well crafted reader-ID fantasy,

Then there's Tale of Two Cities, which my father kept by his bedside through college and never got past page five.

In Japan, I stayed at a hotel once with cable radio -- 440 stations -- which included several sleep channels including train noises, philosophy lecture, nature sounds, beachscape and a counting sheep channel. I don't know that it would have helped get to sleep, but it was funny as hell.

[read]

i have insomnia if i drink two cups of coffee instead of usual one in the morning and stay awake until 2am, too sensitive to caffeine i guess
what helps me to fall asleep is reading something medicine related, eating banana and drink milk, i think also the bed orientation is important, north-south, if across, then one's sleep is not restful

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

TMK, thinking about sleeping keeps it at bay. That's why I'm almost glad my eyes have deteriorated to the point where I can read the digits on the alarm clock.

Ahistoricality, SHUT UP!

AWB, I wager you rarely sleep the night before you teach too? I typically don't---hence all the over-elaborate lesson plans. (I usually write them up after-the-fact. I'm always afraid I'll do something effective one quarter and just forget it, absolutely, by the next.) I've tried the game-playing, but I get too involved and want to take notes. "If I do X, I'll be able to anticipate Y next time because I'm an idiot who doesn't want sleep apparently.

Rich, I really like that idea---much more than Mike's suggestion that I get healthy and exercise (I walk three miles every day! That's exercise!) (Sort of!)---and will try that out. I have a stack of Bester I haven't read since my voice dropped.

Sisyphus, if I take two purring cats on put them on the bed, they'll curl into a ball for a few hours, then start bathing each other, then IT'S PLAYTIME BROTHER COME ON LET'S WRESTLE! (Not that I can avoid this situation, mind you.)

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Didn't see the last two comments:

Ahistoricality, I have a CD titled "Thunder and Lightning" that I slip in sometimes. Almost makes me think I'm still in a place with weather, so it sometimes does the trick.

read, if I did the north-south thing, first light would stream in my window every morning. (Combination of windows and married-side-of-the-bed orientation.) I've tried cutting back on caffeine---I don't drink a lick after 2 p.m., but it's not the caffeine that keeps me up. I can be tired and stupid unto death and still not be able to sleep because I'm mulling over the relative merits of different puddings. It's a curse, I tell you.

[Rich Puchalsky]

"which included several sleep channels including train noises, philosophy lecture, nature sounds, [...]"

I wonder whether they picked out a specially boring philosophy lecturer? Perhaps, this being Japan, they have competitions. The winner does that reserved-yet-proud thing and gets their lecture preserved in order to bore to sleep generations to come.

Scott, it's important that the book you choose be one that isn't quite actively annoying -- it should be something that, on balance, you'd enjoy reading in a sort of mindless way -- but it shouldn't be anything that you could actually, for instance, write a post about. What you're going for is vaguely pleasant boredom, where the words have become so familiar that you find yourself dropping off rather than having to read them again.

[read]

first light would stream in my window every morning
that would be the best thing to restore your circadian rhythm