I have, it feels like, lost the ability to get a good night’s sleep.
This is a problem, of course, but it’s one I’m not entirely sure how I’m supposed to fix. I am doing the right things, in terms of going to bed at a reasonable time and trying to decompress my head by reading a little before turning out the light and settling in for the night. It’s not as if I even have trouble falling asleep, because even that I feel as if I’d be able to address in some form or another. Instead, I fall asleep almost immediately, and I don’t wake up until the next morning. It’s just that… I don’t feel particularly well-rested.
Again, the problem isn’t that I’m not getting enough sleep, although I could almost certainly go for more. I’m getting maybe… seven hours or so a night? Maybe closer to eight on some nights. That doesn’t feel like I’m running at a deficit, especially compared with my historical averages. (When I was a kid and entirely invincible, as kids are, I could manage on four or five and still feel fine the next day. Ah, those were the days…) It’s simply that I do not, for whatever reason, feel as if I’ve actually slept when I wake up in the morning.
The reasonable answer about what’s happening is probably connected with the amount of stress I’m feeling lately — the job is filled with things to utterly dominate my mind and refuse to let go, unfortunately, and that’s been the case since the beginning of June; that’s an entire quarter of a year, almost! — but, despite what G.I. Joe once told us, knowing isn’t half the battle. It doesn’t really do anything for the sense of exhaustion I’ve taken to permanently wearing around my shoulders, like the fur of a shittily-designed fantasy warrior.
Instead, I find myself yawning by the time it’s 5pm, and my eyes feel heavy around 8. I’m in trouble by the time fall will arrive, if this hasn’t sorted itself out; I’ll hide from the inevitable chill in the air and the darkness outside in the evenings, and fall asleep by accident in front of the television, lulled into unconsciousness by the drone of the latest episode of a reality show and unable to properly relax for the same sound quietly nagging in my ears.