a night of insomnia
March 22, 2011 § 1 Comment
It wasn’t too hard to wake up for sunrise this morning because I had a pretty fitful night of sleep. I had all the good intentions of “early to bed, early to rise…”, but it didn’t work out that way. I was in bed by 9:30 so I could get up at 5:15 to go to a 6:00am yoga class with a friend. An hour or so later I woke up to my husband (as we say in the South “bless his little heart”) calling me to say goodnight from NYC where he was out with a friend.
I tried to slide back into sleep, but my mind started wandering to different projects I’m working on and before I knew it I was wide awake, my mind racing. Then it was too warm to sleep and the wind started up outside which rattles the house it’s so strong. I knew I had to get up early and needed to get to sleep which made it even harder because it put even more pressure on sleeping. I feel for people who suffer from insomnia.
There’s an old saying “a good conscience is a soft pillow”. I used to be a much sounder sleeper and in the last year I’ve been slowly getting better about it. It was hard for me to sleep for awhile when I went through my divorce four years ago. It was something I could never completely reconcile with myself, even though it was the right decision. That was then compounded by a high-pressured advertising job in LA where I always felt like I wasn’t doing enough. I got to a point where I was literally working in my sleep.
This project inevitably gets me to look at things in different ways than I have before. Even when I know clearly what I want to do at the beginning of a week, as the week progresses it often leads me in different directions. I think as much as this week is about testing out the morning person side of me, I think even more so I want it to be a reclamation of wonderful, deep sleep.
Maybe it’s time to officially put my conscience to rest.
52 To Do 
I’d love to know what you discover about nighttime habits that help make bedtime=sleepytime at 1030pm instead of midnight….