#10 years. god by this summer it’ll have been 10 years!!! agh

[oplishin]

Big fan of Seth throwing the steel chair into the ring knowing he wouldn’t be able to use it!!! Putting on the shield gear knowing he wouldn’t be able to do anything with it!!! He deliberately made himself bait for Roman to destroy I’m fuckfidnshsj WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM

The. Self destructive penance of it all.

[whentherewerebicycles]

y’all something is so broken with my ability to sleep and I just *incoherent screaming for one thousand years* ahhhHHHH. I lay awake for at least 2 hrs 15 min last night after bedtime (I hide all the clocks so I’m not staring at them or thinking about them but I do allow myself to check the time once per night if I am still not asleep and have to get up to use the bathroom). I suspect that during that time I am not fully awake—I did an overnight lab sleep study once years ago and it said I spent a long time moving in and out of stage 1 sleep ie the “dozing off” period that is only supposed to last for a few minutes—but it sure feels like being awake and it also just cuts out a huge chunk of the night where I should be getting NREM (healing stage) and REM sleep (dreams), which I knoooooow must be happening because I wake up with every small injury or strain feeling sooo much more sore and painful, and my whole body just feels like it’s taken a beating instead of rested.

I WILL NOT DESPAIR!!! (she says, a bit despairingly.) okay the breathing and visualization stuff works, I can feel it working, I can feel all 2.5 fucking hours of it working, but there’s still SOMETHING that is making it hard for me to transition from that light drifting relaxed state into deep sleep. the good thing is that after a lifetime of ~delayed sleep onset~ I have learned not to panic about it in the moment because it’ll just wake my brain up more and make it harder to fall asleep. but like while not panicking is good it also does not fix the underlying issue aghh. ok jes think what can you do.

I know I am ultra sensitive to caffeine so maybe I need to carefully examine the caffeine content of the foods I’m eating to see if there’s anything that might be disrupting sleep there

I know I have a lot of sleep disturbances at certain phases in my cycle but it’s hard to track because my cycle can be so irregular. but maybe this is something to research—if it’s something hormonal are there things I should be doing/not doing or eating/not eating?

I have been okayish at putting away screens an hour before bed but there are some nights where I’m wearing my blue light glasses and I convince myself it’s basically fine. it’s probably not fine. I think at some point I want to experiment with a complete screens fast after different times at night—maybe a week where at 8pm I lock up my phone and laptop somewhere so I have 2.5 screen free hours before lights out. I need to do this just to collect some DATA because having that info will help me figure out if it’s that or something else

I exercise 60-120 min a day and I’m careful not to exercise within 3 hours of bedtime so I know it’s not an exercise thing. but maybe I can see if there are tweaks to be made there like I know the morning walk in sunlight is supposed to help your circadian rhythms normalize

I know I’m not always great about ONLY sleeping in bed and ONLY getting into bed when I’m ready to sleep. this is partly just living in a small space where there aren’t that many places to be! but maybe I can look into creating a cozy reading nest in the corner or something so I have a nice place to hang out but can reserve my bed as a space I am only in from 10:30pm-7am. hmmm ok maybe I will think about this today

at some point I need to do the full cognitive behavioral therapy insomnia thing where you deliberately practice carefully scheduled phases of sleep deprivation to force your body to reset but god I do not look forward to it! maybe this summer when I don’t have to be alert for student meetings

I also want to explore napping at some point I’ve never been able to nap but it’s maybe mostly because I’m terrified that napping will affect my ability to sleep at night. but maybe this summer I will experiment with some diff sleep/wake cycles throughout the day and night to see if a mid-afternoon nap would help

I know this is probably at its core a combination of so-so sleep hygiene practices (which I can fix) and my chronotype/innate circadian rhythm (which I can trick a little bit but probably can’t fundamentally change). my mother and grandmother have exactly the same pattern of delayed sleep onset / easily disrupted mid-night sleep / sensitivity to hormonal shifts and we are all extreme night owls who have to live on an early bird schedule. it is FRUSTRATING to know that but also slightly comforting because I feel like it helps to think of sleep issues not as “something is broken inside me ahhHHHHhhHhhhhhh WHY” and more as, like, something about my body’s natural temporal rhythms does not align with the schedule or temporal rhythms of the society I live in and I just need to figure out how to bring those two things a little closer together ahHhhHHH but okay, agh, time to face the day