Inside the mind of an insomniac

I've been going through a rough stretch of sleeplessness, at least 2 weeks. Fourteen days may not seem like a lot, but the last two weeks have seemed like 2 years. I don't know how parents with small children function on next to no sleep because I'm in a haze most of the day. Driving makes me nervous in this state, concentration is impossible, my blog has gone to the wayside, and the house is in shambles because I have no mental or physical energy.

I've had problems with sleeplessness in the past and I've followed the suggestions provided by the medical professionals; go to bed and wake up at the same times, stop the caffeine intake in the afternoon, don't read or watch TV in bed, don't take afternoon naps etc etc.  The suggestions helped some, especially going to bed at the same time every night and no naps. But it seemed like time resolved the insomnia, or rather, whatever issue I was puzzling over was resolved.

It takes me forever to fall sleep and I wake frequently. While I go to bed at the same time every night, I sleep in and take naps when I can to catch up. I know these are cardinal sins for the recovering insomniac but I still have trouble sleeping whether or not I take a nap or sleep in late.

So what does one do while waiting for sleep? For one, reading makes me sleepy.  I may read a book, my nook or pick a boring topic and google it on my android. I've read the names and dates of World War 2 battles, looked at the weather in various cities on weather.com, played Words with Friends, read various topics mentioned on talk shows (I've recently read about polygamy, the drug wars in Mexico, Arab Spring to name a few) and recently, I looked up the large hadron collider (LHC) because it was a main character of sorts on a Big Bang Theory rerun. Well THAT backfired because it turned out to be more interesting than I thought and after reading the wikipedia article, I went to LHC's main website and then a website of one of the collider's projects and before I knew it, 1am had come and gone.

So blog world, I'm still here but fatigue has made me foggy and clouded my creativity.

Keep your fingers crossed that consistent, uninterrupted sleep comes my way soon. I miss writing.