I think I’m developing some sort of neurotic sleep disorder. For absolutely no reason, I have been having trouble sleeping for the past few nights. First night, I was not tired at all. Wide, wide awake. I lay in bed for something like three hours, wondering why I was feeling so energetic. I put it down to… A lack of exercise. I didn’t really know. That was just a guess.

I got onto my computer and poked around at stuff for a while. I considered playing Bioshock, but I figured that I might get carried away and play till dawn. Yes, it’s happened before. When I first got the game, I played it till about 6am, before remembering that my parents would be waking up soon, and then hurriedly creating a save file and jumping into bed. So instead I started looking for stuff on the web. Tried to find a book, whose title I still do not know. Needless to say, I was unsuccessful.

However, I did make some rather troubling discoveries. For one, there were people online past 2am working on their PW. I was like what? Yes, it seems that I have underestimated the horror that is Project Work.

Still, I managed to register the irony of the situation. Elsewhere, there were people struggling to keep awake. Probably downing cup after cup of coffee. With heavy eyelids, they would stare at an uninteresting wall of text trying to remember what the point of the project was. And there I was, restless and painfully cognizant. It was just so wrong. If I could give my insomnia to other people when they need it, I would.

I eventually went to sleep at around four. I woke up somewhat later than I had planned. Went for German class and came home. That night, I couldn’t sleep either.

The difference however, was that this time, I was really, really tired. I’d been working on a surprisingly demonic chemistry practical report for about four hours, continuously. Okay, so I wasn’t really focusing for the first hour or so, but that didn’t stop the entire process of working out those obscure chemical reactions between hypochlorites and iodide salts from being frustrating. I eventually finished up at about one in the morning, having taken too much time creating a flowchart that contained so many permutations that I had to resize it about six times…

There has to be a better program for creating flowcharts than Powerpoint.

(and also, typing out chemical equations in Word is a real pain in the ass. And fingers.)

I thought, hm, should have no problem falling asleep this night. I was just, wrong. I lay down on the smooth, comfortable mattress and closed my eyes. And waited.

And waited.

After an hour of listless tossing and turning, I got up and starting cubing. Spinny spinny spinny. Seizure. I recorded a few of my solves on my mobile phone, and even managed to catch a 37 second solve. Eventually my hands grew numb, so I turned on my PC, and watched a couple of episodes of Futurama, while wondering when Heroes will return.

Soon, it was 4am. I thought, hell, I’d better try to sleep, or I’m going to be a total wreck later. So I did. And… Nothing happened. I tried everything. Honey, lavender, counting people who are getting their testicles chopped off… Getting desperate enough to pop a couple of my allergy pills, before realising that these weren’t the sedative kind.

Fuuuuu---

Damn. I’m going to ask for the sedative kind next appointment.

So instead I plugged into my MP3 player and listened to a few symphonics that I’d almost forgotten about ever since leaving band. I managed to get into a sort of… Semi-conscious state. Forty-five minutes later, I removed my earphones and tried to remain in that state. It… Sort of worked. I definitely managed to fall asleep soon after, because I remember grumbling about the sun being bright and hot when I woke up several hours later.

I don’t remember having anything caffeinated on those couple of days. Yet I was unable to sleep. It was really uncomfortable.

In any case, I feel like having donuts.

-Joe