God knows, I'm bad at most things, but I'm good at sleeping. It can be hard to get me into bed, but it's nigh on impossible to get me out of it. I can sleep for England. I love to sleep. My Significant Ex and I once slept through the burglar alarm going off at his mum's and the police coming round with his elderly key-holding great aunt to check the place out. We woke up five hours later and wondered if we'd forgotten to set it.
So why am I awake? I've been awake since four. I'd like to blame the students, who generally get home around that time on a Tuesday morning, but I can't - we discovered the joy of term time ear plugs last year, and haven't looked back. No, I just woke up. I put the light on and finished my novel, then I turned the light off and lay in the darkness for an hour, and then I thought fuck it, I'll get up. This almost never happens. I am not one of those people who creeps round the house in the small hours making cocoa and listening to the World Service.
I was out last night, had a few drinks. I did have a lychee martini (which, incidentally, tasted like heaven on earth), and gin can mess with your head, but that doesn't account for it. It wasn't one of those panicky fast forward did-I-say-anything-unforgivable depth of the night hangover awakenings. Not even close.
I'm worried about work things. A sort of mild, bottled panic that might pop its cork anytime but hasn't quite yet. I am over-committed and under-resourced. That's just how it is, probably, I need coping strategies that I haven't managed to develop, but probably will. But normally, when I'm not there, I'm pretty good at not thinking about it. I don't get paid to wake up at four in the morning, you feel me?
Specifically, I'm furious with several of the powers that be at NGO X, who have turned our IT helpdesk into an ITIL-compliant Service Desk. There is a poster on the wall which says 'are you being served?'. Well, possibly, technically, if telling me that the thing I am asking for is not on the list of things that are now permissible counts. You can close that call and hit your target. I've been served, but I've not been *helped*. I'm just looking for another workaround, and feeling sad for the guys who used to be able to help people. While I was lying in the dark, I hit upon the workaround I can use, and wondered if it contravened any policies, and wondered if I cared if it did, but I'm not so sad that this would have actually woken me up.
My foot hurts. I'm bored of not being able to walk properly. I haven't been able to get to the allotment and water my cabbages. I'm slightly allergic to the dressings I'm using so my foot is itchy as well as sore. I just want it all to heal up and go away. In the back of my mind is the thought that it might not. All reasonable enough, but you know, sleep helps, and I'm tired. So WTF?
I used to go for a weep in Wantage at 7am every Tuesday. It was the hardest thing in the world getting up for that. There's something about the early morning mind that's easier to access, apparently. No wonder, given the chance, I normally sleep till 11.
joella
4 comments:
I found myself inexplicably awake a bit when I was recovering from my broken wrist this year. Had to keep on telling myself that I was also resting by lying on the sofa boltawake watching bad anime or fussing the cat.
Weeping in Wantage sounds like a wound condition me... hope you're not suffereing from it too much
xx J
I think you may have hit on it: wound insomnia. No reason, just happens. I'm still awake.
But I can just about grasp that it's a passing phase.
I'm emphatically not a cat person, but I did think this was possibly quite cool: http://store.theonion.com/kitten-thinks-of-nothing-but-murder-all-day-ladies-p-143.html
Illness and insomnia seem to have that special kind of codependant relationship that thrives on the incompatibility and friction, always finding time for another bout of early morning catastrophising or mid-afternoon emotional exhaustion, egging each other on...
...'oh you don't have time for this because you're TIRED are you? Well I'm SICK. What about that, HUH?'...
...they really should just split up.
I *am* very much a cat person (I dig haughtiness and the ability to sleep all day) and that shirt is nice.
After your demole-ition, it's not surprising that you are lacking a certain amount of mollification and find that something is mole-esting your sleep.
But this too will pass and soon you'll found you're making a mountain out of a heel-mole.
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