Hoping to join the most moronic fraternity in the world
January 29th, 2012
Elizabeth Gumport on insomnia:
It is impossible to describe insomnia to people who are sound sleepers. These are the people who trust that getting in bed will be followed by falling asleep, as surely as night follows day; these are the fearless people. Sleepless people are a very different breed. They know what insomnia really is: not just the failure to fall asleep, but the fear of that failure. For an insomniac, there is no such thing as a good night. Every evening – even if it eventually, mercifully comes to an end – is shredded by anxiety. To reach sleep the insomniac must first pass through terror. [...]
January 30th, 2012 at 21:49
What really is the sound of despair in the endless dark night of the soul is hearing Sailing By and the weather forecast at a quarter to two (CET) and knowning it will be the World Service soon and you're officially having a sleepless night.
January 30th, 2012 at 23:31
I pretty much never go to sleep before 1.00am, so for me it's finding myself with my brain still going full pelt at 2.30 that tells me that it's time to seriously consider getting up and doing something useful on the computer to kill time until it's 6am and time to get up, because sleep clearly isn't coming.
(I just have to hope that the phones will be reasonably busy at work that day, the better to distract me from thinking about how tired I am as the day progresses.)