Do you know what time it is?
1:30 AM. 1:30AM on a Sunday.
I’ve been awake since 6AM yesterday morning and frustratingly I can’t fall asleep at all. What a change. I used to pride myself on my nocturnal prowess; now I’d give anything to fall asleep. Hit the bed at 10:40PM yesterday and been tossing and turning ever since.
If this were a normal night I’d be upset and…resigned to my fate. I’d lie awake; stare at the ceiling and concoct an entire world in my head. People. Places. It’d be a waking dream. A fascinating collage of the person I want to be and the life I want to live. I’d give my imagination freer rein – a nod to my childhood, where every night I’d construct this fantastical world – a place of images, light and wonder. A place my thoughts can only hint at now.
But this isn’t a normal night.
I have to study for the next week and every night like this means a day through which I’ll stumble heavy-lidded. Half-asleep I’ll stare at my notes, read the same page over and over as my overstretched neurons fight a losing battle to assimilate new information. I’ll be slower. Absorb less. The work I learned today will fade away and long-term recall becomes questionable. I have exams and nights like these are disastrous.
So right now, I don’t feel inconvenienced. No. I feel afraid. Afraid that whatever I’ve learned today won’t last. That I’ve lost yet another day.
I feel I’ve f***** up.
I once heard that the best way to get to sleep is to not try to go to sleep. I often find if I know I am supposed to be doing something else, I have an easier time sleeping. Things like: getting up in the morning =P , taking off my clothing that I wore for the day when going to sleep, getting in the proper sleeping postion (not with feet on the pillow on top of the blankets), turning off the light, doing some assignment that is due the next morning, etc.
You need to relax your mind and stop worrying about getting to sleep (and everything else). How about you try to challenge yourself and see how many sheep you can count? ;)
[laughs]
Those are some odd ways in which to go to sleep.
In 3A I routinely fell asleep on my ECE 316 textbook. Unfortunately, that happened with remarkable frequency when I was studying for the final.
I don’t do that anymore.
I’m just really worried about exams. The problem is however, that I can’t achieve the Zen-like state of “no-worry”. I’ve tried to concentrate on my breathing. No luck. Tried to empty my mind. You’d figure that after all the blanks I’ve drawn over the years during exams :~) that’d be easy. Uhuh.
My body is betraying me!