boundaries

I'm not sleeping well; nothing unusual there. But it's not just being unable to get to sleep like normal: I'm also waking in the night and being unable to get back to sleep. Well, if I'm honest it's partly unable but also because I'm unwilling to sleep. I still resent sleep from taking me away from the things I'd rather be doing.

Consciousness is far more interesting to me than dreaming - I generally remember what I do when awake (depending on the number of alcoholic relaxants taken..) but very seldom remember my dreams. Therefore I have this weird underlying feeling that sleep is wasted time. I know it's not - but that's an intellectual thing and the feeling that I'm missing out on life by sleeping through it is a gut feeling.

I love the night. I love the oddness and freedom that comes with being awake when 90% of the city is unconscious. It feeds my anti-social (or, rather, quirky-social: I don't hate being around people - just most people) nature and my need for solitude. There's also more magic and mystery in the night than in the dull light of day - especially when you live in a big dirty city. Darkness cloaks a multitude of metropolitan sins - and makes some of those sins much more interesting..

That said: the guy who stands against the wall of my building is far more freaky at night than during the day. Not that I've ever seen him do anything. He just stands. Wearing a big jacket with lined hood, baggy warm trousers, and bare feet. He never begs, doesn't have a sign or anything, doesn't have bags. He just stands.

Even for a street dweller he's odd.

But back to my main point: I've identified my problem (in truth have known it for a while) and I think I'm probably ready to deal with it, i.e. make myself into a functioning diurnal member of society. Now comes the hard bit - actually making myself do it. Self control is needed - and I have very little of this.

So for starters I'm banning myself from taking my laptop to bed - it's too easy to get suckered into teh interwebs and the weirdness therein (I spent more than an hour on 4chan last night ffs..). I'm going to try for a more structured sleep time, i.e. something before 1am - preferably around 10-11pm. Which may be a hard ask - but if I'm at least in bed at that time sleep might come sooner.

I'm also switching to going to the gym in the morning for at least one session a week. That's going to be a killer but it'll at least shift the strenuous exercise to a better time of day. The evening training takes a while to come down from.

So. We'll see what happens - I don't think it'll be smooth sailing in the least and possibly I'll fail completely. But I'm obviously fine with that: it's my current lifestyle. It'd be nice not to be entirely dog tired for at least a couple of days during the week.