Sometimes, I have trouble sleeping.
Forgive me if I’m repeating myself - I haven’t read my blog in a while; but, then again, neither have you.
Sometimes, I have trouble sleeping. When my wife was pregnant, an older guy at work told me I was soon to enjoy the last good night’s sleep of my life. (I really do feel like I’ve written this before. But I’m not gonna check. Maybe my troll will tell me in the comments.) This older guy said once my kid was born, I wouldn’t sleep well because kids don’t sleep through the night. And once my kid was old enough to sleep through the night, I’d be too old to sleep through the night myself.
He was right.
Sometimes, I have trouble sleeping.
It’s very common for me to wake up in the middle of the night. Usually around 3 or 4, but sometimes around 2 or 2:30. Really, it could be any time. For years, my strategy was to just lie there in bed and “try” to get back to sleep. That strategy doesn’t work very well. “Trying” to get back to sleep is really just hoping to get back to sleep, and I’m pretty sure hoping to get back to sleep accomplishes nothing other than making it more difficult to actually fall asleep.
So in my infinite wisdom, after several years of tossing and turning, I adopted a new strategy - I’d get up, go into the living room, and read in low light. I’ve known for a long time that reading in low light makes my eyes tired, and making my eyes tired helps me fall asleep. Actually, now that I’m writing this, I’m remembering that I’ve often recommended to my son that if he can’t fall asleep, he should focus on keeping his eyes closed, and eventually he’ll fall asleep. It kinda works. Sorta. But reading in low light and making my eyes tired works even better. So I’d get up, go out to the dark living room, turn the lights on my Kindle down to just bright enough that I can barely read, and get to work making my eyes tired. Eventually, I’d get back into bed and fall asleep. It works (for me), and it has the added bonus that reading is more interesting that tossing and turning. But it’s not great - sometimes I have to read for an hour or more, which is time that I would have rather spent sleeping.
A few months ago, before quarantine, I told my doctor that I sometimes have trouble sleeping, and I told him about my reading strategy. He said he had a much better idea. The best idea of all. He said it’s better than all the other ideas about how to fall asleep. It’s called “sleep stories.” You get an app on your phone that has people reading boring stories in soothing voices. And so you put your earbuds in, so as not to disturb your wife, you turn on the stories, and it helps you fall asleep. I tried it, and for me, there are a few problems:
Problem #1: I have my earbuds in. I don’t want to fall asleep with my earbuds in, and if I take me earbuds out, I can no longer hear the sleep story.
Problem #2: The sleep stories didn’t help me fall asleep. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough, or listen for long enough, or find a boring-enough story with a soothing-enough narrator. But whatever the reason, it just didn’t work for me.
Then one day I was reading the internet. You know what I’m talking about - the greatest source of misinformation the world has ever known. Maybe I was researching something, or trying to find something I wanted to buy. I don’t really remember. What I do remember is that I was definitely not looking for pro tips about how to fall back asleep when you’re lying awake in the middle of the night.
So imagine my surprise when I stumbled across a pro tip about how to fall back asleep when you’re lying awake in the middle of the night. All you do is write down whatever is on your mind. To be totally honest, I don’t even really remember what the tip was exactly, but what I took away from it was that I should write down whatever is on my mind. So I tried it. I was lying in bed in the middle of the night, wishing I was in the middle of a book so I could get up and read myself back to sleep, when I remembered about the writing thing. I got up, stumbled into the kitchen, felt around for a piece of paper and a writing implement, and wrote down whatever was on my mind. I didn’t turn the lights on, cuz lights make you wake up. I just scribbled some words down. I stumbled back to bed, closed my eyes, and fell asleep. Just like that.
The next night, I did it again. And it worked, again. And again. And again. A few times, I’d get back into bed and something different would be on my mind, so I’d get up and write another thing down. But it always worked - I always fell back asleep.
There are a few things about this technique that are mystifying and awesome.
Mystifying and Awesome Thing #1: I don’t have to write down a solution or an idea about how to solve whatever is on my mind - I just have to write down some words about whatever it is, sometimes just one word.
Mystifying and Awesome Thing #2: My writing doesn’t have to be legible. I don’t even have to read the note the next day or ever. I just have to go through the act of writing.
Mystifying and Awesome Thing #3: As I’m writing an illegible and sometimes incomprehensible scrawl about whatever is on my mind, I know damn well that I’m just doing it to fall back asleep, that I’ll probably never read it, and that if I did try to read it, I probably couldn’t decipher it anyway, and even if I could read it and decipher it, it wasn’t going to help me in anyway, because it’s just naming a topic and not actually trying to solve anything. This is what seems so crazy to me - even though I know I’m just doing this to fall back asleep, it still works! I get back into bed and that thing I just wrote down is no longer on my mind.
One morning, I was eating breakfast with my wife and son, and we were discussing my budding prowess as an author of late-night non-sensical notes. I found one such note right there on the table, and my wife asked what it said. I looked at it, but it was, well… hard to read. I really had no idea what it said. She took a gander, and with not inconsiderable effort, she said, “you… something… something… asshole.” Well that doesn’t make much sense. I squinted, I tilted my head, I held my breath. And then - Oh! I remembered - my son and I had started watching a Netflix show called “You.” It’s about a stalker, in that the protagonist is a stalker. It’s a good show, but it’s pretty disturbing watching this show where the point of view character thinks he’s a good guy, but he’s clearly a scumbag. Anyway, I had woken up in the middle of the night with You on my mind. So I got up, stumbled into the kitchen, felt around in the dark for a piece of paper and a pencil, and wrote down the following words: “You Show Stalker Asshole” And then I stumbled back to bed and fell right back asleep.
My wife asked why I didn’t just keep some paper and a pencil next to the bed. It seemed like a good idea.
I didn’t do it. I just kept stumbling into the kitchen in the dark.
Then one day, in the middle of the night, lying in bed with something on my mind, I decided to take it one step further. If I knew I was never going to read it, maybe I didn’t even need to write it on paper. Maybe it was just the act of moving my hand to make the letters. So, I rolled onto my side and “wrote” on the sheet with my finger.
And I promptly fell asleep.
It’s amazing. Sometimes, I write a thing and then another thing pops into my head and so I write that thing and then another thing pops into my head and then I write that thing. But since I don’t have to get out of bed or turn on a light or anything, I can write lots of things in very little time. Each thing I write stops being a thing that keeps me up, and pretty soon, I’ve written all the things out of my sleepy little head. As an aside, I do have a little head - a pinhead, you might say. My brother also has a tiny little head. I think my mom does, too. My cousin, though, has a really big head. So does my nephew, the son of my pinhead brother. Maybe there are no normal-sized heads in my family, I don’t really know.
But I digress… The point is that I, like many great explorers before me, have discovered one of the great mysteries of the universe - sheetwriting.
I was curious if sheetwriting works for anyone else, or if it’s just a Nate thing. I had told a few people, including my mom, about the late-night note-writing, but nobody seemed to take me seriously. Then I told my mom about the sheetwriting. And of course, my wife knows about it, because I talk about it a lot, and because she had read the “You Show Stalker Asshole” note. One morning she told me she tried it - she wrote one word, the name of someone she thought she might have offended. It wasn’t clear how well it worked for her, but I was happy she tried. I suggested she try more words if it wasn’t working. Then my mom told me she tried it. And she discovered something - it only worked in the middle of the night, it didn’t help her if she was having trouble falling asleep at the beginning of the night. I think I agree with that.
So, what have we learned?
Thing We Learned #1: Sheetwriting. It’s a thing. It works for me. I think it works for my mom. It may or may not work for my wife. I wonder if it works for you. Since my wife and my mom make up an unreasonably high percentage of my readers, I guess I’m just wondering if it works for my friend in Santa Fe who, other than my son, is possibly the only other person who will ever read this. I don’t even know if he ever wakes up in the middle of the night, or if he even has sheets on his bed. He probably does (have sheets on his bed). And probably it doesn’t matter anyway, cuz mattresswriting is pretty much the same thing. Or palletwriting, if you just laid you down a pallet on the floor.
Thing We Learned #2: It may have been somewhat bold for me to liken myself to the great explorers who have come before me. But it also may not have been. Cuz sheetwriting (see Thing We Learned #1).
Thing We Learned #3: I think note-writing is a bit more powerful than sheetwriting. I didn’t mention it before, but I do think it’s true. And I think it’s ok to list it as a Thing We Learned because I learned it and you’re learning it right now, assuming you’re still reading - and if you’re not still reading, then you don’t even know I cheated by listing this as a Thing We Learned before we actually learned it, so it’s still ok.
Thing We Learned #4: I have a tiny head.
Wow, that’s four things we learned! I’d call that a good day.