balance #17

So I broke my sleep.

In the last couple of years I’d been putting some serious cracks in it, stress waking me up in the middle of the night. Over time it turned into reverse insomnia, falling asleep within minutes at the start of the night, but waking up and not being able to get back to sleep. 5am was workable, grinds you down but you can function. As it crept earlier, to 4am, to 3am, it got harder.

In contrast, my work life just got better and better. I built good relationships, particularly with my boss, was working on some interesting projects. Over the Christmas break I caught up on sleep, really unwound, was looking forward to going back to the quietest time of the working year.

Second night after going back I woke up at 1am after an hour or so of sleep. And went to work. And knew I had to do something about it.

Temazepan. In the end I think it was a great placebo, was a security blanket to help me get over the anxiety about sleep itself. The directions said to make sure to be in bed within ten minutes after taking it… I was often awake reading for an hour or so afterwards.

The good news is I’m mostly over it. Exhaustion was one of the reasons for the lack of drawings. The other is teaching myself javascript to build a website mapping beer flavours. It’s still a bit buggy in parts, but aren’t we all.

Tucked in