Archives for posts with tag: insomnia
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Low Drama Insomnia

January 23, 2026 //
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My sleep was poor last night. Frequently interrupted by one noise or another, but also sometimes just because I simply woke up for no obvious reason. It’s fine. I’ve had a problematic relationship with sleep all my life. I finally woke at a time sufficiently close to the time I generally get up that I went ahead and got up. Would it be coffee or walking? The forecast suggests coffee – another freezing morning. I dress and head out, hoping that I avoided waking anyone, and grateful that in spite of my restless night I’m not feeling groggy.

Each time I woke during the night, I’d turn over or shift the covers or fluff my pillow seeking new comfort, eventually returning to sleep (once waking from a deep sleep surprised to find myself waking; I had been dreaming I was awake, laying there in the darkness lol). I wasn’t stressed or anxious over being wakeful, it happens. Insomnia lost a lot of its power over me when I stopped being anxious about the insomnia itself, or the lost hours of sleep. (Now and then, if wakefulness overtakes me more thoroughly, I just get up, read or write or paint or meditate for awhile, but last night wasn’t that kind of night.) I woke often, returned to sleep eventually, and repeated that experience several times during the night, about every 90 minutes or so. I’m okay for most values of okay, in spite of that. I couldn’t get by on this kind of shitty sleep indefinitely (although I have in years past). I may be tired to the point of being fairly dull or actually stupid later today; I remind myself to get important cognitively dense tasks and work requiring focus knocked out early in the day.

Perspective is a big deal; the spiders in life are not actually as big as they sometimes look.

The restless night causes me less concern that this feeling lately that I “just don’t want to be part of any of this”, and a latent yearning to “walk away” from “all of it”. I know myself pretty well. There’s nothing specifically “wrong” such that resolving that would clear up this feeling, it’s more to do with just not being easily able to get a particular need met well in a way that satisfies it (a need for solitude and a break from emotional labor). I struggle to escape awareness of all the madness going on in the world, and every day there’s some new bit of unbelievable petty unfathomable craziness from the demented elder cohort leading the nation (the cruelty of this adminstration is astonishing and revolting). It stresses me out even to the minmal degree news reaches me at all. (I’m really trying to avoid it for my own sanity.) I’m still – to an extent – in a caregiving role, and present circumstances being what they are (economically, financially, socially…) I can’t just drop everything and check-in to a beachfront hotel, turn my notifications off for a a long weekend, and just paint, and write, and be alone. (In 2023, I could get an off-season room on the coast for $40-$50 per night, right on the beach. Now even off-season rooms are $200 per night at old rundown motels on the other side of the highway, with no view or beach access.) It’s definitely too cold (for me) for camping, too. The time is not now. I’m tied to this experience by the requirements of work and life, the limitations of my circumstances, and I’m reluctant to tell people I care about to fuck off (for awhile) and just leave me alone. I want very much to meet my need for solitude without causing anyone pain or suffering or hurt feelings (creating chaos and drama while seeking to escape chaos and drama defeats the purpose entirely). Anyway, I’m painfully aware that regardless, I’d be dragging my baggage with me, and it is in fact something within myself that I’m seeking to evade, escape, or “fix”. Reliably. I sigh at the inner recognition and acknowledgement. So… what to do about it, though? I sip my coffee and reflect on that awhile.

As with any choice, there are verbs involved.

I find myself feeling sympathetic towards the Anxious Adventurer – this “self-awareness”, and “self-reflection” stuff isn’t without its challenges, and this human journey that is so much about self-discovery and growth is not an easy one. We are each having our own experience on a journey without a map.

Walk your own path, choose your own verbs, and build your own practices.

It is Friday. The weekend is ahead. I breathe, exhale, and relax. A week of working from my employer’s San Francisco office follows the weekend (I fly down Tuesday, return home Friday night). I smile at myself for the tempting thought that I might get some solitary time, if only in the very early morning and in the evenings after work, while I am in San Francisco, but it didn’t work out that way last time at all. The opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in a shared space resulted in longer work hours, and no time alone of note. The company puts us up in a comfortable clean hotel, and I’m grateful for that. I will probably sleep well, but I don’t expect much solitary time, or leisure unless I make a point to carve out time for myself and set very firm boundaries. I smirk at myself knowingly; it’s a coin toss. That’s why I keep practicing; I clearly need the practice. lol

Perspective is sometimes about the view from a singular moment. If I stand somewhere else, doesn’t my perspective change? 🙂

I sigh to myself. I’m okay for most values of “okay”. Life is pretty good, most of the time. Hell, I may not have slept well, but the morning is not as cold as forecast, my headache isn’t bad, my arthritis pain is well-managed – I feel okay. Things could be worse. A lot worse. I’m bitching that I don’t have everything, and can’t satisfy every need I have or soothe every emotion I feel. Shit, we’ve all got problems, right? This journey isn’t effortless or infinitely pleasant, and our “second dart suffering” is the larger share of our suffering for much of our mortal life – and we can make choices that reduce that a lot. I breathe, exhale, and relax, and make a point to let go from clinging to my suffering. In this moment, here, now, things are pretty much fine. Good coffee. Warm cafe. Pleasant music in the background. A weekend just a few hours away. Less than usual physical pain. What is there to suffer over, really? I mean, right here, right now? I’m among the very fortunate; I have a paying job, a cozy home, medical care, potable drinking water, and there are not bombs dropping here, nor am I at high risk of being assaulted or kidnapped by the government thugs roaming our communities in masked packs. Viewed that way, it’s more than a little annoying and self-indulgent to sit here with my hot coffee on a cold day bitching about not being able to get away (from my pleasant life)! I chuckle softly to myself; I am a human being, being quite human.

My coffee has gone cold. Tepid, at least. I don’t really care; I notice and move on. The clock keeps ticking. The music plays on. Daybreak will soon touch the horizon. The pings on my consciousness of various notifications start piling up. Seems like a good moment to begin again. I wonder where this path leads?

Once we choose our path, we’ve still got to walk it. The journey is the destination. 🙂
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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, War and News of War, winter, women, Words

The Secret to Better Sleep

November 23, 2025 //
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Well…a secret to better sleep, anyway, there are others. Sleep hygiene is tricky. The modern world has a lot of distractions, and a single day sometimes seems too short to fit everything in it. Sleep difficulties can become sleep disorders over time, and there are many of those, each with their own characteristics and common causes.

Over a lifetime, I’ve experienced many sleep disturbances: nightmares, insomnia, sleep paralysis, night terrors, “exploding head” dreams, somnambulance, talking in my sleep, paradoxical insomnia, hypnagogia, apnea… That’s not an exhaustive list. I have a difficult relationship with sleep, and always have. These experiences aren’t limited to my adult lifetime, some have been characteristics of my sleep since early childhood. Some don’t trouble me anymore at all. Some linger as occasional occurrences. Here’s the thing, though, I mostly sleep pretty well, generally, these days. Yes, there’s actually “a trick to it”, one single small change that made a really big difference.

I’m not going to drown you in words making you wait for me to share this incredibly useful practical change that did so much to help me get better, healthier sleep. No subscription. No course to purchase. Also no promise offered nor guarantee being made, I just know this one detail has made all the difference (for me). I reset my expectations about sleep, and I stopped being stressed out and frustrated over not sleeping.

… That’s it.

Like a small town on along the highway, if you blinked you may have missed it. What was the change I made? No kidding, I changed my relationship with, and expectations of, sleep. That has been the thing that has done the most to improve my sleep. I still have occasional (sometimes frequent) sleep disturbances, but they rarely amount to a “disorder” these days, and they rarely last long or recur endlessly. See, it was the frustration, stress, and anxiety over not sleeping that resulted in the worst adverse effects of impaired sleep over time, not the impaired sleep itself. The emotional reaction to not sleeping restfully caused more problems than occasional failures to sleep ever could.

Seriously. It isn’t that noise keeping you awake, or the light, or the ticking of the clock, or that other person’s breathing. More often than not, it’s the stressed, frustrated, angry emotional response to not sleeping. The more vexed by our wakefulness we become, the worse our difficulty getting back to sleep. That’s been my experience, anyway. Take it for what it is; subjective experience, and a sample size of one.

I’m not saying changing one’s perspective on something as vexing as poor sleep is easy, or that it takes less practice than any other willful change. It takes practice, and commitment, and repetition, and I failed a lot and endured many annoying, sleepless, restless nights getting from “there, then” to here, now. It’s a huge improvement, though. The stress and frustration, anger, and despair over not sleeping was doing a lot more damage to my overall wellness and quality of life than my impaired sleep was, though. So…

Now, when I am wakeful, I turn on soft lighting unlikely to rouse me, and read awhile (taking care to choose reading material unlikely to cause excitement, itself), or get up briefly for a drink of water, and some meditation. Nightmares? I let myself wake in my familiar safe environment and soothe myself with a bit of meditation and return to sleep after my nightmares fade. I accept that I have some sleep challenges, and refrain from worsening those with aggressively anxious or frustrated rumination, obsessive blame-laying, or defeated self-talk. The acceptance itself is a useful tool. I’ve stopped trying to force my sleep pattern to comply with some notion of what sleep should look like, and I allow myself to sleep as suits me best. Does that “fix” my insomnia? No, but it doesn’t bother me when I wake during the night, or struggle to fall asleep. I just go with it. The result being that I am more likely to fall back to sleep fairly quickly – and on those occasions when I don’t, I’m not beginning my day in a negative emotional state on top of being tired.

I sit quietly at the trailhead, thinking my thoughts and grateful for the pretty good sleep I enjoyed last night. Did I sleep through the night? No. I rarely do, but I wasn’t awake long, and sleep returned relatively quickly. It took a long time for me to learn that the stress over poor sleep was doing more damage to my sleep than the poor sleep itself would do. It took even longer to really accept how true that was and do something useful with that information. Along the way, my sleep improved, quite a lot, because I also made a point to learn and practice good sleep hygiene, generally. All the many practices I practice intended to improve my emotional wellness and physical health have also helped improve my sleep.

I guess what I’m saying is that changing my response to poor sleep in the moment has done more to improve the quality of my sleep than any one other change.

I sit with that thought awhile. I’m happy to share it without monetary gain, and I hope you find it useful if you struggle with poor sleep. There are still verbs involved, and you’ll have to do the work of making a change on your own. I can’t really help with that. I hope you do though, and I hope you get the rest you need to be and become the person you most want to be. We’re all more pleasant and capable when we get the rest we need.

Another day, another chance to begin again.

Daybreak comes. It is a gray and wintry looking autumn morning. The oaks have lost most of their leaves. The surface of the marsh ponds is still and dark. The sky is a featureless wash of gray-blue. The path stretches ahead, disappearing around a bend. I breathe in the chilly autumn air; no scents of flowers now, only the autumn damp, and a hint of rain to come. I exhale, letting lingering background worries go with my exhalation, dissipating with the cloud of my breath. Lovely morning. A good morning to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, Words

Walking in the Dark

August 22, 2025 //
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I woke ridiculously early this morning. I could hear my Traveling Partner coughing in another room. “Rough,” I thought, as I sat up, “sounds like he’s having trouble breathing.” As I reached for my phone to turn off my sunrise alarm and turn on a dim light, I realized I was pretty stuffy, myself. Allergies? Probably. Or not. Doesn’t matter, if it isn’t going to kill me, I guess. I notice that my head is pounding, too. Nasty headache to begin the day with. Great.

I sigh and stretch, and start getting ready for a new day. I figure I’ll just go get an early walk in, before work, although it’s not yet 03:30, and this changes which trails are available – or safe to walk. I think it over as I dress. My beloved seems a little surprised that I’m going to just go ahead and go, so early, but there’s another heat warning in effect, and it’ll be uncomfortably warm relatively early in the day, so perhaps it is just an opportunity? A lifetime of sleep challenges and insomnia have prepared me well to make use of strange hours. lol A hug, a kiss, and I’m headed out the door to walk in the darkness.

I walked the marsh trail with my headlamp in my hand, pointed down low to illuminate only the ground, and I watched Venus chase Jupiter up the dark backdrop of the starry pre-dawn sky. The morning was ever so still and quiet, and even the traffic was muted. I heard the crunch of my steps on gravel and over dried leaves. The air was still and smelled faintly of mushrooms and summer nights. I definitely had the trail to myself! Sounds in the underbrush as I strode through a grassy stretch covered with sparse old oaks gave me a moment of doubt about my decision-making, but it was only a family of racoons scrambling about, playing and foraging. They took off in other direction when my light reached them.

We spend a lot of our lives “walking in the dark” – life is a journey without a map, and we don’t see clearly where the path may lead. I think about that as I walk. I feel fortunate that this stretch of the journey is a familiar, there’s comfort in that. I stretch as I walk, hoping to ease stiff muscles and joints, and maybe this headache, too. It doesn’t help much, but it feels good to move. As I walk, I think about the tools in my toolkit, metaphorically speaking, and how best to organize my time and manage limited resources in this new here-and-now filled with uncertainty. Isn’t life always a little uncertain? I breathe, exhale, and relax. Could be worse – so much worse. This is only a beginning. Yet another. I wonder where the next opportunity may take me?

…I laugh out loud in the darkness when I catch myself thinking “what do I even want to be when I grow-up?”, realizing I am a long way down life’s path to feel that way, and yet it is still a question I often ask myself…

I get back to the car. I drive to the office that will soon no longer figure into my days at all, most likely. I prepare the budget for this pay period, aware that “things have changed” and that I need to consider new concerns, new details, new limitations – at least for now. Sometimes it’s a little scary. Sometimes it feels rather mundane and ordinary. My emotions are still shifting and I’m still “processing this”. Fuck I will so miss this particular job… on the other hand… it’s a job. There are others. I sigh as I hit “send” on the email to my Traveling Partner sharing my thoughts on the budget and seeking his. I’m grateful this is a shared journey.

I had planned to go camping next week, feeling very secure in my position in life and the world when the plans were made. I cancelled that to make room for uncertainty – and to map a new path. There’s quite a lot to do. I smile to myself; I may even spend time helping my Traveling Partner in the shop – or paint. Change is. Were this 5 years further down the road, I could perhaps simply file for my social security retirement, and breathe a little easier while I look for work, but that time is not now. Doing so now would be a terrible tactical move for the future. I sigh again and shake off the temptation toward wishful thinking. It’s a good time for taking a practical (and where feasible, wise) approach to “right now” – with a loving eye on the future, too.

…Aren’t we all sort of “walking in the dark”, much of the time? I sip my icy cold office coffee and think my thoughts awhile longer. The sun is rising now, and it’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being

Another Sleepless Night

May 4, 2022 //
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Awake again in this noisy place. The lights here have a hum. Each light has its own. Most of them fall just enough outside the frequency range of my tinnitus that I do hear them… and more or less as if my tinnitus has somehow expanded. Super annoying, but in the darkness of night that is not what woke me. It wasn’t even the occasional mechanical grinding of the parking garage door opening, then closing. It wasn’t the talkative folks in the adjacent room; they’ve finally settled down to sleep. It isn’t even the acid reflux that seems to be along for this trip to the office.

…I think I’m just homesick…

I miss my Traveling Partner. He’s getting some uninterrupted work time, which is likely pretty helpful right now. I know he misses me, though. We exchange text messages through the day. Gentle pings. Reminders of love. I appreciate this practice quite a lot. I’m eager to be home, though, and the week feels long and fatiguing.

I’m fortunate to have so much to go home to. I’m eager to return home. I miss that place. I miss my garden. I would miss these things even in a solitary life, sure… but what I miss most is the love that waits for me there.

I sit quietly awhile, writing paused. I reflect on love. I think of my Traveling Partner’s soft breathing as he sleeps. I wish him a good night’s rest from afar. I sip on this bottle of water, waiting on the acid reflux to subside a bit. It’s not quite 2 a.m. this time. I woke around 12:30 a.m., and I’d very much like to get more sleep. lol The work days feel long on these visits (they are), since I’ve little else to do (I tend to be rather focused on purposeful on these trips). I haven’t done much sightseeing, so far. It just seems to require more of me than I’ve got available, energy-wise. So, the work days run longer, compounding the issue. S’okay, though; I’m here to work. So I work. 🙂

In another time and place, I might have gotten dressed, put on my shoes, and gone out into the night to walk awhile. Pretty healthy choice for dealing with insomnia, but Seattle is a big city, and this is not a great neighborhood to be a wandering stranger in. Times have changed and the world feels less safe for that sort of thing, generally. So, I don’t go walking. I consider the small gym downstairs… but the lights there are ridiculously bright, and that would likely result in further sleepless ness.

…I try not to spiral down dark mental alleyways, and avoid looking at the news…

I’m feeling pretty over this acid reflux nonsense. I try to remember why I did not go to the corner store at the end of the street for antacids, earlier… I think I was just tired. Short-sighted. I’m regretting that I allowed fatigue to put me in this situation a second night.

…I can’t believe there were no Tums in my toiletries (there generally are)…

There was a time when I had acid reflux so chronically, even in spite of taking a prescription strength treatment, that I developed a hacking little cough, and was perpetually distracted and bad-tempered with it. My mind mentally wanders through what I recall of the sundries here in the hotel, while I am wondering if a delivery service may provide relief… then I remember that the hotel does have “the pink stuff” in stock. That’ll do, I guess. Some relief – in exchange for the potential that it may “turn up the volume” on my tinnitus (taking aspirin or other salicylates does seem to have that as a temporary consequence, especially with prolonged use).

I dress and walk down the hall, get some Pepto-Bismol, and some Benadryl (because my spring allergies are going nuts here in Seattle). I pick up a cold bottle of sparkling water, too – it sounds refreshing. The night crew in the lobby have the music turned up, playing something with a thumping beat… Beyonce? Could be. I smile as I return to my room. I’m glad they have a good time in the wee hours. Night shifts can be difficult, and a bit of fun helps.

My phone buzzes at me and I realize I was so tired when I crashed for the night (quite early) that I never silenced it. Could be what woke me in the first place, although the acid reflux would have, eventually. I’m already less uncomfortable, now, and soon the Benadryl will have me thinking of sleep… the trick now is to be sure of going back to bed with no less than 2 hours yet to go – otherwise I’ll wake groggy and stupid, and struggle to “restart my brain” when the alarm forces my attention to the new day. lol It’s not yet even 2:30 a.m…. I think I’ve got this. 😀

There’s something to be learned from this; my reluctance to compromise on my solution-of-choice resulted in two nights of poor quality sleep, and two days of discomfort. Was it worth it? It was not. I chose poorly. Something to think about, as I head back to bed.

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Categories Allegories, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Practices, Sleepless Nights, Spring

A Wakeful Moment

April 12, 2022 //
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I woke abruptly, wide awake in the wee hours. Bad dreams, already unrecalled. I am okay with that. There is limited value in remembering nightmares.

I woke feeling parched and restless. I got up long enough to get a drink of water and attempted to return immediately to slumber. Yeaaaaaah… That’s not working out so far. lol

My head aches. My tinnitus is loud, chiming and ringing in my ears. I sit up to write for a few minutes, laptop dimmed, sipping on a glass of water. I am damp with sweat, whether left behind from my dreams or too many blankets I don’t know.

I would sleep if I could, but that won’t happen staring into the glow of a monitor. I will set this aside, meditate and focus on my breath, until sleep overtakes me once more. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Art of Being, War and News of War
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