Squirrel in the Treetops
Thursday, September 12th, 2024 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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70F and partly cloudy tonight.
The big news today was my sleep report...
Seven hours & 42 minutes of exellent sleep!.. for a score of 93!
And I can attest, I did feel a lot more refreshed in the morning, and all through the shift at work!
And I did not get a chance to see this report until about three hours after punching in.
Okay, here's the graph...
You can see I was in bed by 3AM, and immediately went into light sleep followed by deep sleep.
Then, L D REM... L D L... and awake to pee, right at 6AM... and I remember that pee!
Then alot more great light, deep, and REM until the second pee, which I also remember.
And then you see light sleep until the alarm first goes off, at which point I started hitting the snooze and it was all REM from there, until I finally got up!
So, there's a lot to unpack here, but the first thing I'll point out is that now I can snooze the alarm from the watch!.. which is great!
Because on that little twin bed, flipping from one side to the other is a big production, so if I'm facing away from the phone when the alarm sounds, it's a huge pain in the ass to snooze it.
But this great sleep report card shows that the bed isn't really the problem.
I mean yes, the mattress is responsible for muscle aches in the morning, but those aches don't affect my sleep any.
I really believe I slept good last night on purpose!
Like, I dozed off with the intention of proving to that app that I know how to sleep well!
And I'll get into that more below.
But in terms of unpacking that report card, the other thing I want to touch on is how crazy it is that a device on my wrist can yield such a detailed & accurate picture of what actually happened!
I mean... it's the app on the phone that interprets all the data coming in from the watch, but the crazy part is that the watch has a pulse oxymeter, and an infrared temperature sensor, in additon to the motion sensors that phones typically have.
And I know this isn't really that new?.. like, my old watch could do this seven years ago, when the battery was new enough to last the whole night and following day without charging.
But it's still crazy we have such versatile sensors in such small devices!
These days, it's smart rings that are beginning to take over this kind of thing!
But like smart watches, smart rings are far from universal.
The majority of people don't wear either one... which is why we have, Pokemon Sleep, from, The Pokemon Company, which is a phone based sleep app... that requires you to keep your phone on your bed while you sleep!
And that's truly ridiculous, because there is no pulse oxymeter or anything else... and when the hell are you supposed to charge your phone?
But they're trying it!.. because most people just don't wear devices... especially when sleeping!
This brings me back to what I said above about wanting to prove to the app that I knew how to sleep well!
Sleep is a thing I've been fascinated with since my early teens... and not only have I read all the sleep and dream research books, but... for decades I've tried to study my own sleep and dreams.
When I was a kid, I suffered from chronic insomnia... and it remained a sporadic problem through my twenties and thirties.
The old thing we've all been through, where you turn off the lights, and then your mind just won't stop rambling, with worries and anxieties, as your heart races... with sleep moving further and further out of reach!
And I really made up my mind to conquer it in my thirties, and finally succeeded!
There are differet things that help, like making sure to get out and walk during the day... or drinking beer to relax before bed... and so forth.
But I found that the one critical skill you need, to defeat insomnia, is compartmentalization!
It takes practice, but you have to sort your thoughts and feelings into catagories... ranging from crazy and impulsive, to valid or inspired... and then prioritize those catagories, based on context... and on survival!
So, I may be at work and feel like crying because something brought Prowly to mind... and that's a valid emotion that should not be supressed... but in the professional context of the workday, crying is not appropriate.
The emotion is valid, but in the context of work, it's low priority, and must be reigned in... lest it threaten my survival!
So, what I'm driving at here, is that in the context of your bed at night... the only priority is sleep!
Because without sleep... survival is impossible!
Therefore, all thoughts, and all emotions, about the waking world, have to be 100% shut down and disregarded... once those lights are off!
And I can hear you right now saying, But the whole problem is I CAN'T shut down those thoughts and feelings at night!.. That's like telling a depressed person to just cheer up!
And I feel you!.. but it IS possible with practice and discipline!
I mean... look!.. the actual discipline here, is allowing yourself to say, fuck you to everything going on in your life, and completely ignore it, for the sake of a good night's sleep!
So to get there you have to internalize the truth that... sleep is fundamental to resolving everything else!
Sleep is sacred in that sense, and therefore, off limits to both the thoughts, and the emotions of waking life!
All of it can wait until the morning!
You have to kind of look at sleep like it's death, and just let go!
Like, It's time for me to die now, so goodbye cruel world! None of it matters, where I'm going!
In the early days of my success with this, my go-to brainwave was to think about Jupiter!
Forget all the bullshit and just think about Jupiter!
Jupiter is a real place... that you can see in the night sky as a pinpoint of light, so it's part of our world... but it's soo unrelated to anything going on here!
It's this massive gas planet, with all kinds of swirly belts, ovoid storm cells, and dozens of moons, some icy, other's volcanic.
And it's just out there, in deep space... faaar away from Earth... doing it's thing!
Jupiter doesn't give a shit about who's going to be president!
But Jupiter is still real!
This isn't escapism!
It's not Narnia, or Wonderland.
What is this universe, that a thing like Jupiter is out there, right now!.. out the window... up in the sky tonight?
Why is there life on Earth?
And why do all living creatures need to sleep?.. and to dream?
That's essentially just another version of the old, "counting sheep," trick.
Any mental visualization task that gets you invested enough, can work to silence the day's worries.
But over the years, I found that what works a lot better, is just to re-engage with the last dream you can remember!
It's a bit of a bootstrap thing, because you need Jupiter techniques to get you sleeping decently enough, often enough, to start having some vivid dreams that you'll recall in the morning.
But once you're to that point, it's much more effective to re-engage those dreams the next night, after the light goes off.
Often we forget dreams over the day, but it's fine, as long as you can recall one from the past week, or month... to revisit.
The reason this works so much better, is because those dreams were generated by your brain, while in sleep mode!
So re-engaging them, is just a natural way of shifing your brain right back into that mode.
As I said, sleep is sacred... which means your sleep space needs to be sacred too!
I'm living in a studio apartment right now, and my little twin bed is right here in the same room as everything else!
It's two feet away from me!
But that corner?.. is where I sleep!
And I am ONLY on that bed, in that corner, when it's sleepy time!
The reason I can re-engage with last night's dream so easily when I get back there... is because I haven't been on that bed, in that corner since I was last... fast... asleep!
It's the same as with anywhere else!.. when you return to a location, you get flashbacks about the last time you were at that location.
You get to work, you remember you lent out your scotch tape to Deloris and need to get it back.
You visit your old school, or your childhood home, and you flash back to the past.
With your bedroom... or in my case, even your bed corner of the room... you need to keep it sacred, and for sleep only!
Never hang out on your bed, wide awake, fully dressed, on the phone, arguing with your girlfriend, or paying bills or... really anything!
And that's tough advice to follow if you have a bed mate, right?
If you're married or whatever, and you sleep with somebody... and they're tossing and turning all night... or snoring... or they have insomnia, and are watching shit... or you have arguments in that room all the time...
No!.. then you cannot follow my advice!
Or CAN you?
Look! this next part's gonna be tough for some to hear, but... sleep is sacred, and it's critical to your survival so...
If the reason you can't sleep, or learn to sleep well... is another person in your bed?
I'm sorry, but you have to get out of that situation!
I mean... Yes!.. if you're a young couple, with an infant child, and a new puppy, struggling to get ahead... nobody's getting a good night's sleep!.. right?
You all love each other, you're on the same page, but life is chaos... that's fine!
That's par for the course, and nobody's getting a good night's sleep for many years, because it's part of the sacrifice you willingly accepted, to establish something good, and lasting!
I'm focused here on insomnia... and on people who are not that entangled in things... either because they're young and single... or older and that shit has calmed down... or divorced... or you get what I mean.
If it's on YOU, and you alone, to sink or swim... then a good night's sleep is the most fundamental key to your survival.
And my argument tonight is that you don't need the perfect mattress, or the perfect life to get that.
Even in a studio apartment, on a tiny twin bed, with too firm of a mattress... and even in the midst of seismic changes, emotional distress, and political uncertainty... because it's a goddam election year... you can give yourself a good night's sleep!
And you do it by establishing clear boundaries... between waking life, and the dream world... and keeping your sleep space sacred.
Any squirrel, nesting up in the treetops would tell you the same!
Tomorrow is another day!
Tonight is sleep!
°¦}
