Ok, so I was thinking last night. Why was I thinking? Because I wasn't sleeping.

See, I haven't been much good at getting to sleep lately. In fact, I haven't really been good at it since..ever. Somewhere during the tossing and turning of last night, I came to the suspicion that I may have irregular sleeping habits. I don't really know if it's normal or not, as I've never brought it up with a great many people, but my time between lights-out and sleep is an average of one to two hours. That doesn't seem quite right.

I used to be a lot like that. I would just lay (or lie?) there forever... thinking about this and that... or reading of course.

So my question is this: What do you do to get to sleep? Not necessarily when you're having trouble sleeping, just on a normal night. What's the process you go through mentally and/or physically to shut yourself down?

Maybe I've just been doing it wrong all these years.

It is too bad you haven't worked something out yet. I think that i was only like that for a relatively small portion of my life, a couple years maybe.

My process usually involves the following:

1) Do my best to make sure I'm not excited, or wakeful, or pumped for any reason before I go to bed. That would just be asking for trouble.

Uh... yah

2) (Usually after some reading) Close my eyes, and turn towards thought.

I have found that reading is a terrible thing to do if you are trying to go to sleep. For one, if it is a good book you are not going to want to put it down... and looking at the clock it suddenly says 3:00!! Additionally just having something mentally stimulating like a book on your mind will fill your mind up and make it much more difficult to clear it.

3) If my thoughts are of a more excited nature, I try to think of something calm instead. Like trying to remember what it felt like to come home exhausted from a day's work and finally get to lay down. Or laying on a boat while the motion of the water soothes me. Yada and yada.

I have tried this before, but it doesn't work for me. Because if I am thinking of a boat... then I'll think of patrol ships ramming the boat, and cruisers following them... ugh

4) Roll over whenever I get uncomfortable. Try to forget my growing need to use the washroom (if applicable).

Actually, while I move whenever I go if I need to.

5) Continue until asleep.

That is the catcher isn't it? Well, the way that I started getting more sleep is by getting less. I found that it is soo much easier getting to sleep it you are really tired. Also go to bed later when you are more tired. I found that after doing this for a while, when I started getting more sleep again, i could still fall asleep relatively soon.

Also, think about nothing. I try to do it and it seems somewhat confusing but it sure seems to work. Just ... think nothing, try to clear your mind <insert subliminal directive here>.

Thanks for any input you can give. Maybe once I have a feel for what's normal, I can look into what I might be doing wrong. Or I could just find someone to massage me to sleep every night. That's cool too. *Daydreams*

Maybe this helps. One of my best friend was having the same problem, and his methods were totally different from mine.

Btw... are you a morning person? Because both him and I tend to work fine really late at night. And tend to be dead in the morning.


"With the recent accomplishment of the manned lunar landing.... The 1981 manned Mars mission (1982 landing on Mars) is shown as an integral part of the total space program in the next two decades."
- Space Task Group August 4. 1969