So tired of waking up tired
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(with apologies to the Hoodoo Gurus!)
For the past maybe two weeks or so I have been suffering pretty
regularly, and sometimes quite severely, from insomnia. This is
*super* unusual for me. I very occasionally have the odd single night
of trouble sleeping, but for the most part I have always been able to
sleep like a champ. Anywhere, any time.
I don't really know what has been driving my recent troubles. An
obvious thing to blame is the arrival of summer, which this far North
means the arrival of unrelenting illumination: sunset at about 22:00,
sunrise at about 03:30. But we got good curtains up in our bedroom
well in advance of this, and I don't remember having this kind of
trouble in Finland where it was just as bad (trouble *waking up*
during the inverse scenario in winter, you bet). I also suspect that
stress from the breakneck pace of Gemini development is probably
playing some kind of a role, too, but it also seems strange that it
could cause such severe problems for so long.
When the problem first struck I decided to try eliminating caffeine
intake in the evenings, and this immediately yielded two consecutive
nights of top-grade sleep. "Aha!", I thought, "I've cracked it.
Somehow I've gotten much more sensitive to caffeine as I've aged.
Sad, but I can deal with it". Then, after those two nights, it
stopped making any difference at all. Now I've tried not just cutting
out evening coffee but replacing it with supposedly sleep inducing
tea, to no effect. I've tried drawing the blinds in the living room
earlier than usual and switching to lamps or candles to simulate an
earlier sunset, to no effect. Nothing seems to work.
The cumulative effect of all this over many nights is just really,
really draining and I'm *so* ready for it to be over.
