Ok, so it wasn’t 5pm today.  Maybe I should stop complaining, this is turning into a cruel joke.  Today I woke-up at 6pm!  That’s after I went to sleep “early”.  I actually ended-up falling asleep around 7am.  That’s almost 12 hours of sleep.

Well it looks like I’m heading to bed and it’s about 5am.  It’s a bit better than usual.  We’ll see how well it goes when I check in with you tomorrow.  Today was alright, I didn’t do that much active stuff but I seem to be tired for some reason.  I think my allergies are bothering me lately.  I don’t have horrible allergies but I do have some to trees (as tested) and the usual dust and junk.  They usually only bother me in the spring when the snow melts but sometimes they also bug me at random points during the year.  It could be a reason why I’m not sleeping well lately also.  Who knows…

Well, not really…but I woke up at 5pm again!  It’s a sign!…yes, a sign that I’m not getting proper sleeping hours haha.  Oh well, try again tomorrow, right?

Well, it’s 7am.  This seems to be a pattern getting worse.  Not sure what it is.  I’ve flipped the pattern a few times.  Usually I have to stay up for about 24 hours and go to bed early.  Then I’ll wake-up early the next day and the pattern will be ok for about a month or so.  It’s an ongoing issue.  Most people have a balanced wake and sleep cycle.  What happens if you have to stay up a bit longer each day in succession?  I’m not suggesting that’s my problem, but what if that were the case?  I would have no idea for a solution to that.

So, a huge problem I have is with my subconscious. What do you do when your subconscious tries to battle your conscious mind? What does that mean? Is that even possible? Well I’ll try to look into these questions for you and explain what’s going on.

So, most people have two different modes, sleep and awake. During the shift in these modes a person will usually also change from their subconscious (sleep) to their conscious mind (being awake). For some people, there may be a delay in how fast this shift takes place. This is where the problem comes in…I have my subconscious fighting my conscious mind. A lot of people may be able to relate to this. An example would be when you wake up from your alarm but your body tells you to go back to sleep even though you need to be at work in 10 minutes. If you don’t consciously “realize” that you are late for work, well, then your subconscious won that battle.

The problem I have is that my subconscious is a fighter in a different weightclass than my conscious mind. My conscious mind doesn’t stand a chance! I’ve had numerous conversations with people while I’ve been “sleeping” before…even a couple on the phone. I’d like to be able to say that my subconscious mind is unconscious but that’s not the case either…he/she/it is extremely deceiving. I don’t even think my conscious and subconscious minds talk to each other (well maybe sometimes, but not often).

My subconscious mind is a real trouble maker and (don’t tell him/she/it) I wish I could hurt him/she/it badly! I’m lucky that I’ve never been fired for being late to a job but I usually have to use my creativity to save “my ass” after my subconscious has messed-up my waking time for that day. My subconscious will make me late for work, miss work, miss appointments, phone calls, important events, and well anything else…heck, it doesn’t even matter if it involves a loud noise or fire! I manage to sleep through anything…well almost anything. I’ve resorted to using three different alarm clocks and even still that sometimes doesn’t work.

See, you might confuse my subconsciousness with unconsciousness. Well, I assure you, this isn’t the case…it might be better if it was. At least if I was “unconscious”, I wouldn’t have to blame my subconscious mind. I know it’s my subconscious mind for many reasons. The main one being that my alarms usually wake me up! I’ll wake up and I can turn them off without even “knowing it”. Yes, you read that right! And get this, one of them is across my room. I don’t sleep-walk and never have so at least I don’t have that to worry about. Although it’s not reassuring to know that you can do some crazy tasks while not even knowing it. Like I said, I’ve talked on the phone before and even had conversations with people who’ve come into my room. I used to not make much sense when I talked to people but I think I frustrated people so much that my subconscious got a hold of this “vibe” and realized if he/she/it wanted to stay in control that it needed to fool people. So now, I can have full conversations (when I say “I”, I am referring to he/she/it ) without many repercussions other than of course having no recollection what so ever later.

So, you might think that being able to do things with your subconscious would save you time. Yeah, it could save you a lot of time if you trusted him/she/it. But when you don’t, it’s scary just going to sleep at night. You always worry what kind of new problems the next day will bring. Will you still have a job? What time will you wake up? Did you say something stupid to someone?

You might think that I’m just being sarcastic, not serious and even making some of this up. Well, I will say that while my comments may be sarcastic, I am being 100% honest about the way things are. It’s not fun to have plans to do something the next day, go to sleep, and the next day when you wake up, realize that you slept through the whole day and “messed” it up. Have you ever been woken-up by a call from your employer wondering where you are? It’s not a good feeling! Especially when you have good work ethics, wanted to go to work and are trying “your best”. It feels like someone purposely sabotaged you. The worst part is, the person who sabotaged you was yourself!

With that said, this is to declare my subconscious the winner. Now, please move out of my head while I’m still sane!

Well, I woke up again at around 5pm!  I’m really getting frustrated with myself.  I can’t keep doing this…

A second wind of energy is a dangerous thing.  I find that whenever I’m tired and I ignore that fact for a couple hours, I get a second wind and then I’m not tired again for…well I don’t know, it doesn’t come back often.  That’s what happened tonight.  I was tired early-on and was playing poker with friends, so by the end of it I was no longer tired (and don’t expect me to quit a poker game to go to sleep, what kind of life would that be?!).  So, I am now going to bed at 6:10am…hopefully I’ll fall asleep faster than yesterday!  Night!

Not quite, I wish I had a reason for it.  I got up at around 5pm again.  And, I fell asleep at around 8 to 8:30am.  Seems like an average amount of sleep, just not at the right times.  Maybe I fly to another time zone for a couple of weeks to get some work done during the day and then fly back as soon as the jet lag kicks-in lol.

Well not a proud point, but I think this is my latest (or earliest) post yet.  It is now 6:30am and I am heading to bed and hopefully sleep!  It’s a little warm so I’m going to put my fan on to cool my room down a bit.  I usually leave my television on “sleep” mode and fall asleep with it on.  I can’t usually just fall asleep without some kind of white noise (even if it’s as noisy as a tv) as my brain is too active trying to “concentrate” on sleep :-P.  Goodnight!

So, what is insomnia? Well in my own opinion, insomnia used to be a syndrome or disorder but today is just an excuse for a poor sleep. What do people say when they can’t sleep?…”I had insomnia” of course!

The definition that you’ll find most often of insomnia is that it is a disorder. It’s a disorder that prevents people from sleeping or to stay asleep for a “reasonable” amount of time. I think that can easily be interpreted into whatever you want. What exactly is a reasonable amount of time? That could range anywhere from between 4 and 10 hours!

Don’t get me wrong! I’m not saying that people don’t suffer from insomnia! I’m just stating that insomnia is now a blanket term used to describe so many sleep problems that should all be separate so that they can be treated properly.

Maybe part of the reason behind this are all of the drug companies pushing new sleeping drugs onto the market. After all, they need a market to sell to!

If you want to see how much of a blanket term insomnia is, apparently about 60 million Americans suffer from insomnia each year (according to the US Department of Health and Human Services). So basically what this amounts to is a huge market for drugs that really aren’t needed. I say that they’re not needed because in most cases they’re not and as we all know prescription drugs are hugely over prescribed.

If you suffer from infrequent insomnia, you may be a good candidate for drug therapy. Although, if you suffer from insomnia or another disorder frequently, you may want to stay far clear of drugs. It seems like an easy way out but what drug companies don’t want you to know is that a lot of sleep-aid drugs contain narcotics or other addictive ingredients. After using the drugs for several week, they will usually lose their efficacy. This will mean you will have to increase your dose as your body becomes more and more tolerant. Not only that, but now you will most likely have a dependency to it because of it being a narcotic (or addictive ingredients) and getting off of it will be a pain!…while staying on it is no longer benefiting your body or your sleep.

There’s actually a great article on insomnia. It includes treatment options, and frequently asked questions. It is also written by quite a credible source, you can check it out at The College of Family Physicians of Canada website. Also, if you maybe think you are suffering from insomnia and want a few more natural ideas to try to get some sleep, you can check out this list of insomnia cures and sleep aids.