Silent Night, Long and Sleepless Night

Trouble sleeping seems to have become epidemic in this country. Not wanting to stand out, I have become one of the afflicted.

I rarely have trouble falling asleep, probably because I'm totally exhausted from not sleeping well the night before, and the night before... well, you get the idea.

Where it gets dicey for me is that 2-5 a.m. window. I wake up, inexplicably, and then it starts - the crazy-scary thoughts.

No, not fear of monsters under my bed, the only monsters are residing in my head. These are the monsters telling me I'm doing it all wrong, or if I'm feeling particularly Kanye West-ish, wrong-er.

There's a veritable laundry list of how my life is going to hell in a hand basket that runs through my head in the twilight of my bedroom: bad relationship, job and food choices. "Why did I eat those crackers before bed? I have NO self discipline!" More often than not, lately it's money."Why oh why did I not choose a stable career like finance?" Oh wait, maybe that wouldn't have been so stable either. Choosing to be writer in 2008 is a bit like choosing to be a painter, of the artistic persuasion, not house. Having a passion and hopefully some talent for something doesn't always assure financial reward, but somehow during the daylight hours when I'm tweaking my novel one more time, or seeking larger freelance markets it all seems quite doable. It's during the dark of the night when the demons arrive, carrying weapons of self-doubt and fear.

So I cope by trying to turn it off and going back to sleep, sometimes that works. Or I might try to find a movie to watch which is challenging at 3 a.m. I don't know why programmers don't realize that if you're up watching a movie in the middle of the night, scary and torturous probably isn't what you're looking for. Funny, yes funny would be good.

When I do finally fall back asleep within an hour or so there's something that inevitably wakes me up - my cat attacking my toes hanging off the end of the bed, and lately...birds. Now that it's April, the birds are back and they start talking to each other about God knows what, because my Lord, it's 4 in the morning and they don't stop. Particularly annoying are the mourning doves. A morose reminder of all my awful thoughts of the night. I worry they are there for a reason, telling me something I should know already - they are there to mourn that career that could have been, perhaps if I hadn't been too tired to pursue it more fruitfully.

I refuse to take anything for sleep - too many scary Ambien stories of people doing things in the middle of the night - like eating thousands of calories or driving - and not remembering them. So, unless it's warm milk and honey I won't be ingesting it.

I figure the only cure for this problem is becoming the queen of all media and therein a millionaire. But then I suppose a whole new set of worries inevitably crop up - like worring about how the economy is impacting my investments, and what if I never think of another idea for a book even though I have signed a contract for 2 more... oh my God! That could SO happen!

That's it. I am declaring a moratorium on worry. It doesn't do a thing for you anyway. It robs you of peace, of sleep, health and happiness. So, no more worrying, that's it.

But what if I can't stop worrying? Maybe I have so engraved the neuropathways in my brain that I will just keep on worrying even when there's nothing to worry about. Oh man, I think I just found a whole new thing to worry about...