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Sleep is hard

Originally written 2025-11-11.

Well, I guess it's the falling asleep that's the problem. Once you're asleep, it's hard to notice anything.

Have you ever been so exhausted that you're unable to fall asleep? I have, several times. 0/10, would not recommend. I haven't had that particular problem in a while, but it's a good example of my relationship with sleep. It's not that I don't want to. It's that I'm unable to, or at least that I don't know how.

There are many times I want to fall asleep, but I'll just end up lying there in bed, doing nothing. Often tired as fuck, other times not so tired, but wanting to fall asleep since I have an appointment early in the morning. Usually this is little more than annoying. Usually I can just power through whatever that appointment is, and then just collapse in bed at the first opportunity, but this stops working as well once you have a work life as well. At that point, you're away from a bed for long enough that powering through becomes a lot more tiresome. Not impossible, but definitely not something you want to do on a regular basis.

I swear, my circadian rhythm works on a 26-hour clock or something. I'll fall asleep somewhere around 22 o'clock one day, then midnight the next, then 2 the next, then 4, and now we're really starting to have trouble. It's not usually that consistent, although it has been at times. In high school, for periods, I had a system going where I'd sleep for 4 hours at a time. Fall asleep around 2-4, then go to school, which starts at around 8-9 depending on the day, then finish school at 14-15, then collapse in bed for 4 hours after getting home, then wake up for dinner, then be awake and do whatever, then repeat. This worked surprisingly well actually. If it hadn't been for the fact that my quality of sleep was absolute shit, this could have worked. Alas, this system proved unstable over the longer term.

I have tried a few things to mitigate this, with limited success:

• Air conditioning. This is obviously a good quality-of-life improvement outside of sleep issues, but it does help a lot during the summer. I do have an easier time falling asleep if I'm not sweating to the point of soaking my mattress. I'd prefer to be able to sleep at whatever temperature, if only to not have to use as much electricity, but I'll take sleep over a lower power bill.
• Dakimakura. Yes, I know, I'm pathetic, but holy shit did this work when I first bought it. The times right after I bought it might have been some of my best sleep of my life. 10/10, would recommend. And I didn't even get a particularly high quality daki. I'm sure you could do better. Bonus points for getting to see someone I love when I wake up. Sadly, this didn't last. Eventually, this just became part of the status quo, and I'm now back to sleeping like shit, but it was nice while it lasted. This could probably be improved by getting the real life version of a daki, but I sadly have limited experience getting to fall asleep while hugging someone, although what experience I do have does tell me it would help, assuming temperature doesn't become a problem.
• Melatonin. I tried this the instant it became available over the counter over here, but sadly it hasn't helped much, although I haven't tried just tanking pills to be fair. I do become more tired when I take them, but not to the point of actually falling asleep unless I was already on that edge. It might be helpful if I needed to fall asleep right now, but I would have fallen asleep naturally within the hour, but the problem is usually that I should fall asleep now, but my body wants to fall asleep in 6 hours. I don't need a small push to fall asleep; I need a teleporter to Dreamland™, since even by train I'll be too late compared to when I should be there.
• Different pillows. I'm actually really happy with the set of pillows I have right now. I can highly recommend alpaca wool. It's really comfortable, but the problem clearly lies elsewhere.
• Music. It's hard to measure the effect of this, since I have to pick different songs depending on my mood or whether or not I'm sick of that particular song, so it's hard to do an AB test. I know this used to work, since I had a specific song which did the trick, and has thus been played over 20000 times going by my iTunes library, but I'm kind of sick of that song right now, and it doesn't really do it for me. Other songs do work every now and then, but I don't have a reliable fallback.
• Masturbation. A decently reliable fallback, but one I'd prefer to not be reliant on. Not to mention that it too is no silver bullet.

Sleep is one of those things that just slips away when you chase it too hard. I imagine that if I were one to have a sofa and have that be my primary place to relax during the afternoon, then I'd probably end up falling asleep there just because I'm not really trying to fall asleep and I'm relaxed with something on in the background. But the way the situation is now, with me sitting in a chair or some other place that's not a place you can really just lie down and fall asleep like you can in a sofa, any sleep has to be done in my bed, since I'm not one to fall asleep sitting upright in my chair. And once I have to get up and go to bed, the battle is already lost.

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