What is this shit? Five nights out of seven I wake up at 3 or 4, and am awake for two hours. And it is not just any old awake!!! No. It is the awake of the 'active mind'.In fact, my mind is so active that it is often at this time that I am at my most productive. I have, in the past, been known to write entire presentations, letters to friends, shopping lists, 'to do' lists (general) or applications for "Britain's Got Talent" in the middle of the night, waking the next morning to find that not only can I not remember doing it, but that it is usually - in the case of work-related matters - of a very high standard!! It is odd (but not that odd, considering there are no distractions at all e.g people asking for stuff, crying because they haven't been promoted, wanting to know how to unblock the photocopier, asking me to be in meetings that are a waste of life, etc.)
I have heard that this is in fact entirely normal, as is the desire (and one I heartily endorse!!!*) to have a kip in the middle of the afternoon. In the olden days, apparently, people would hop out of bed, light a pipe, read a bit, wander around a bit and then go back to bed; sometimes they could be quite sociable, these middle-of-the-night wakingnesses, and you might find two or more people in eighteenth century nightclothes gathered about the fire in amusing hats talking about things.
Since discovering that it is normal I have worried less. And yet still I am tired! My accursed mind. So full of nothing and everything, whirring about the place. I am put in mind of a poem by Fleur Adcock that goes like this:
Things
There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse
and worse.
And yet it reminds me that my non-sleepingness is not fair, for even if there is nothing standing icily about the bed, I still wake up and whir in the head! I am thinking of trying out 'meditation', but I am too tired to find somewhere to go and do it.
* When I worked for Britain's best-selling quality daily newspaper, I would often crawl round the side of my desk, between it and the window, and have a little sleep. It was really good, until I got found out and photographed.
15 comments:
I have often fantasised about sleeping in the office with the sun from the window providing a warm cosy blanket. That and weeing in a changing room....
Sam
Dear Monkey,
Check out the post times on my blog. I am finding 3-7 AM to be an extremely productive time as well. If only I could get my boss to realize how productive 1/2 day, every day, without interruption would be!
You're productively wakeful? Where can I purchase one of those, because I am grimly and resentfully wakeful with no productivity whatsoever. The sort of wakeful where you glare at the clock just to satisfy yourself that yes, it is now 3:15 a.m. and you are STILL awake dammitall. I do take the afternoon nap now and then but I resent those as well just to keep things nicely balanced.
Dashed paparazzi.
Oh Lord, how can I tell you this?
You should have remained a non-working monkey, as waking at that time in the morning is a classic symptom of stress.
When I can't bear the tossing and turning, of mind and body, any further, I get up, make a cup of tea (I know: caffeine) and listen to the BBC World Service. Deep, peaceful sleep is guaranteed within less than thirty minutes.
I do the same but slightly later - around 4 to 5. Suddenly, for no reason, WIDE AWAKE. Usually, I go back to sleep easily, but I could really do without having to see FIVE A.M. on my clock every morning.
And as for naps? I vote YES!
If only I could get my employer onside.
You are lucky it is productive. I wake at that time and tend to contemplate my own iminent mortality and regret that I will not live for longer and get to fulfil all my dreams. I fall back to sleep about 5 minutes before my alarm goes off.
At which point, I rouse myself, grumpily facing up to the fact that I didn't die in the night and will have to get up and go to work.
I would have liked to have remained a non-workingmonkey, as it is the only state in which I am truly happy. But I need money and my de facto spouse (NB: de facto), refuses to be my 'keeper', which is both unreasonable and selfish.
Jude. It's the 5 minutes before the alarm goes off I can't bear. I lay in bed with tears of self-pity in my eyes this morning. Then I ate some toast and was OK.
A slightly expensive but effective banishment of those wild insomniacal thoughts comes in the form of a fully charged iPod touch by the bedside brimming with an assortment of season 1 & 2 Dukes of Hazzard episodes. Out like a light in minutes.
I can't sleep either. Which is why I'm commenting on your uncannily uncanny blog.
My one-year-old has this. But now that I know that it is normal I shall just get him a pipe.
Damn. Now I want to live in the eighteenth century. The vast quantities of gin would help make nocturnal wandering more fun I would think.
Hey, I should send you a complimentary copy of The Tedium Files, my handy two volume companion to all that is dull in Brussels. Thrill to learn of information exchange practices among contractors working on the recondition of the waste factory in Issy les Moulineaux. Gasp at the audacity of manufacturers of seamless steel tubes. Fall instantly into a dreamless sleep.
Insomnia is not nice....even if IS productive....am sorry you are experienceing this. I seem to be in a sleeping but vivid dreams phase. That is also a trial........
meh!
"you might find two or more people in eighteenth century nightclothes gathered about the fire in amusing hats talking about things."
This made me laugh lots. Couldn't exactly say why, but there you go.
I'm a bit jealous though. I have never woken in the night and done work. I love the idea of waking up to find all my work done, as if by small and magical fairies. Or even large and magical fairies, what do I care if I can't even remember them. I think you should cultivate it so that in the end you can do all your work in the middle of the night without even remembering, and then it wouldn't matter that you were tired in the day, cos you could just go back to sleep again.
(Have you ever written a novel in your sleep? Where you dream that you are reading a novel and the words appear magically on the page before your eyes, real words, and it is a really good story, but you can't remember it when you wake up? It's a bit rubbish. Not as good as your thing)
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