When the Mind is Restless and Sleep Elusive

I've been having trouble falling asleep lately.

Or rather, I've been having trouble falling asleep at the appropriate time lately.

Like, my urge to take a nap kicks in at 6pm. Which means my urge to be productive and do work kicks in at midnight, even if I didn't give in to my urge to take a nap. So then I'm just tired and wired from midnight 'til, like, four.

My urge to snack is just on all the time...

It's not that I dislike sleep or anything weird like that. I know it's good for me {in the right amounts} and honestly, when I do finally fall asleep, I've been having some pretty awesome dreams {ie: protecting innocent people from bad vampires, testing skill and strength on an American Ninja Warrior-esque playground structure, racecar/go-kart driving on steep, curvy mountain roads, saving backyard kittens. My subconscious knows what's UP. Such a thrill-seeker}.

But even knowing that sleep is a good thing, I'm still awake when I don't want to be. 

It's like this odd sort of restlessness, where you know that you're doing things and accomplishing stuff, but it all still doesn't seem to be enough. Like, you know where you should be in life, and you're not there, and everyone around you seems to be, so it's awkward.

It's not jealousy. I don't envy them or covet what they have. I'm truly, honestly glad they have all these opportunities to be awesome amazing, because they deserve it and they've earned it. Plus, they're all good kids and I adore them. So it's not that.

It's more a sense of deep-seated anxiousness/breathlessness/anticipation/uneasiness that's become so engrained/ignored over time, that it's now just lodged somewhere far in the back of your head and in the pit of your stomach, and it comes out every now and then and punches you in the throat when you're hoping to fall asleep. And then you allow yourself a mini pity party and then get over it and then vow to GET STUFF DONE tomorrow. OR ELSE.

I don't know. Sometimes my brain will whisper that everything will be fixed when I finally get a job. And then my common sense will smack that whisper upside the head with an eyeroll and a "You know better than that. There's always SOMETHING that'll worry us; the key is to roll with it and not allow it to settle in and get comfortable. You are given what you can handle and when the time comes for you to face your next problem, you'll be ready, prepared, and okay. Breathe. And stop being so dramatic."

No seriously. My common sense doles out eyerolls and eyebrow-raises to the drama queen part of my brain on the regular. It happens.

So yes. I should be asleep. Because I have to wake up early tomorrow to drive to the community college and ask them to FIND MY TRANSCRIPTS, PEOPLE, since they seem to have up and disappeared online. Which is not cool. But probably also not anyone's fault. So I'm just rawwwring at the system in general right now.

Two hours after I originally tried to go to sleep, I'm just finishing this post. No, it did not take me two hours to write this. I also internet-researched a company, read several blogposts on my phone, watched this Anna Akana Youtube video and geeked out, double checked my alarm for the morning, and finished a for-fun book that I wasn't planning on finishing anytime soon but oh well too late. Had I known I'd be awake this long, I'd've just worked on an application. ))):

I've got to figure out how to knock out like those people who can just sprawl out in bed and fall asleep. Instead of composing blogposts in their brain since they're awake and then feeling the urge to write it all out before it's gone again.

You know who I do envy? My dog. She sleeps anywhere and everywhere and can catnap with the best of them. That's a skill I wouldn't mind having...