Imprisoned by insomnia

The insomnia is back. If it ever really went away.

I was so tired earlier this evening, I was about dozing off while talking to a friend online. OK, so perhaps putting a headset on and laying down on the couch may not have been the best idea. At one point she even gave up on me and was just going to go about her business and let me sleep.

So, I took the hint and said my goodbyes. I didn't even bother to close my IM connection. I just took off the headphones and closed my eyes. I woke up about two hours later.

So, after doing a few little chores, I decided to head off to bed. That was sometime around midnight. Now, here it is, more than three and a half hours later, and I'm wide awake.

You'd think with all this not sleeping, there would plenty of time for making posts on here. However, I've been employing the strategy that if I'm in bed and preparing to sleep maybe I will actually fall asleep and get more rest than if I sit up half the night on the computer until I reach the point of exhaustion, which used to be one of my more frequently employed insomnia strategies. Of course that strategy worked fine when I was working a swing shift and could fall asleep at 5 a.m. and still get 8 hours sleep before getting up to go to work. That doesn't work so well on a day shift.

Is it still insomnia if you get 6-8 hours sleep?

I guess I can't complain too much. I've certainly endured more fucked up sleep patterns. Some years back, I was working a job where I had to be at work even earlier than I do now. And in that job I was putting in a ton of hours. My days went, generally like this. Go to work about 7 a.m. Work til about noon. Go home for lunch. Take a nap for about half an hour to an hour. Go back to work until about 6. Go home for dinner. Take a nap for about an hour. Go back to work until about midnight. Go home and goof around on the computer until about 2 or 3 a.m. Try to sleep until the alarm clocks (I think I needed about 3 to get me out of bed at that time) went off. Jump through the shower and head to work to start the whole cycle over again.

It was fucked up, to put it mildly. Not that anyone set those hours for me. I was just Mr. Insane Manager, wanting to kick ass, take names and conquer my little corner of the world. Fortunately, after about a year and half of that I realized that schedule would either kill me, or I would lose any grip with reality and turn homicidal on someone else's ass. I already had a couple of potential victims in mind. Also fortunately about that same time, a colleague told me about a job opening in another city. I applied and got the job before killing myself or someone else.

At least I haven't started picking out victim here. Yet. But if I ever do, and if I got arrested, whether found criminally liable or mentally incapacitated, odds are good that I could still stay here in Salem, at either the state penitentiary or state hospital.

But I'm not sure if that's really a good thing or not. I can't get my family to come visit me in my apartment in Salem, what do you think the odds would be they'd make the trip to my cell?

It might improve the love life though.

OK, yea, sleep deprivation does some fucked up shit to the brain.

I think for now I'll try to maintain my place among the unincarcerated psychotics in Salem.

Insomnia