In the Middle of the Night

That’s when I blog. Starting now.

Sleep never used to be a problem for me. It is now. A minor problem, but is still a problem.

I used to sleep right through the night. I’d get a solid 6-7 hours. Not anymore. I’m up in the middle of the night now.

Usually, it’s not “my fault.” The pets wake me up. The dogs insist they need to go outside. And I oblige because I don’t want accidents in the house. And one of the dogs is older now and has some sort of disease (might be Cushing’s – will get more tests on Friday). So when she needs to go, I will oblige.

The problem is that now both dogs will wake me up. And I think it must be for potty. But, no, it’s because of some noise outside they want to investigate. What I really need is an indoor dog toilet. Or I’d like a fenced in yard with a doggy door that’s accessible to them at night. But husband would never go for it because of security concerns. And now that I think about it, I’d also be afraid they’d somehow get into trouble even in the yard.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. The problem that is no fault of the dogs is that once I’m up, I often have trouble getting back to sleep.

This is very disappointing because sleep used to be my “super power.” All I had to do was decide I wanted to go to sleep and I’d be out within 60 seconds.

And it wasn’t because of a set routine of always going to bed at the same time. My schedule was much more erratic back then. My super power was very useful and enabled that lifestyle. I was able to strategically get some sleep at all times of the day so that I’d be rested and ready for what I had planned to do later.

Now, I have that common problem of being tired in the middle of the night, but unable to fall asleep. Honestly, maybe I just don’t try with enough focus now. I don’t really want to go back to sleep; I want to think about things.

And I remember reading that being up in the middle of the night isn’t actually bad for you. It’s how humans functioned for years. The period of darkness is very long. Before we had lights, it was common to go to sleep not long after it got dark; wake up in the middle of the night for an hour or two to do some thinking, talk with your mates, make love, etc.; and then go back to sleep. They did an experiment with modern humans and found we go right back to this pattern when we no longer have lights. I should find this info and see if I remember it correctly and link it here.

So instead of being up in the night and a bit frustrated that I know I should be sleeping instead of thinking in circles, I’ll take advantage of that time and write some of my thoughts online.

Hopefully, once I’m done writing, I’ll also be ready to sleep. Here goes…

UPDATE: It worked! Fell asleep immediately. Even better, did it twice again after I was woken up by my husband’s alarm and then by my cat throwing up.

Side note: Grammar also used to be a strength. But somewhere along the way I started expressing myself with sentence fragments. The more I do it, the worse it gets. I’ll often correct it – because I know better. But sometimes I don’t – because it’s a more accurate representation of what’s in my head.