Insomniac

While life’s been busy over the last few months, it’s also been a rotten period for my insomnia.

Well, the insomnia’s been doing really well – it’s just that what’s good for insomnia is (by definition) fucking bollocks for my sleep. So I’m knackered, and have been for a fair while now.

Obviously it varies – and to a degree I’m used to rotten sleep – but it’s been pretty cruddy of late, even by my own standards.  I’m used to – and pretty much fine with – around 4 hours a night, and can even get by for a while on 3 a night.  But recently I’ve been lucky to get two.

This, from last night, is the best night I’ve had in ages…

SleepTimes

Frankly, that’s just messed up.

The thing is, no matter what goes on, nothing changes it significantly. I can go to bed early, I can go to bed late. I can drink coffee and diet coke, or I can cut out caffeine – either from sometime during the day, or completely. Eating early, eating late. Reading, not reading. Temperature, clothing, bedding (i.e. on the quilt or under it) – i’ve tried changing all of those things.

And none of it affects whether I sleep badly or not. When it was really bad a while back, I cut out caffeine totally for a couple of weeks. Even by the end of that period, I was sleeping even worse than usual.

All told, it’s just a pain in the bits. I’m hoping it’ll settle a bit more now, but well, we’ll see.


Perfect Timing

On a totally different note, why is it that batteries in smoke alarms and CO2 detectors *always* need replacing at 4am?

Bastard bloody things.

Still, at least I now know – not that I had any doubt, and I certainly didn’t need any proof – that I can’t sleep through a CO2 alarm.

(And of course yes, I can now – because I pulled the dead/dying batteries out of the fucking thing)


Creativity Locked

Over the last couple of months, my creative side has felt like it’s completely locked up. I don’t particularly know why – although I suspect it’s linked to feeling constantly tired, burned out, and unwell.

After this weekend, I’m making some changes again – mainly employment stuff (of which a bit more tomorrow) but also a few life-based things.

With the new job, I’m aiming to limit myself to work-based stuff just in work hours. With the last couple of jobs they’ve been coming home with me, and it’s been sitting in my head. I suspect that’s been a mistake.  It’s certainly put me in a position where a lot of the time I don’t even want to look at a computer while I’m at home – although again that may be down to also feeling depressingly run-down – so I’m currently hoping that if I limit myself a bit more workwise, I might have the time and inclination to do other stuff when I’m back at home.

It could also be that I’m going through a bit of a depression dump. It wouldn’t be the first time that I get affected like that once the days have started getting longer. I can deal with – and fight – the seasonal depression of long nights and grey days, but once the days get longer I lower my guard, lower my resistance, and sometimes it just hits hard for a while.

I’m hoping I’ll find some ways to reset myself a bit over the next couple of weeks, but we’ll see.

 


Hectic

Another busy week, what with one thing and another. Lots of prospective work, lots of paperwork, and being sociable as well. It’s a tough life.

As it is, it looks like I’ve now got work in from two ex-clients, as well as the ‘proper’ job, and some prospective bits along the way – and there’s still the other prospective bits I want to do for my own company/business.

Other than that, the week has also involved trips to see friends, cinema visits, and tonight I’m in London to see Bill Bailey do a test-run of his new show.

Hopefully the weekend will involve down-time – although I’m not convinced – and I’m currently debating taking a day off next week just to catch up on some sleep and other stuff.

So yeah, back to business as usual next week, I think. Or maybe some updates over the weekend too – depends how things go.


Changing Hours

At the new contract, my hours are somewhat different to usual. It actually works out pretty well – both for me, and for the business – but it’s rocking my body clock a bit in this first week.

Based in Cambridge, I’m working 7.30 – 3.30. We work with development teams around the East Indies, so when I’m starting work, they’re just finishing – it means we can do meetings without extra hassle.  It also means I’m avoiding all the really crap traffic (although this week is somewhat non-standard, as it’s half-term, and I suspect it’ll be a bit different leaving during ‘school run’ hours in the afternoon)

However, starting at 7.30 with a 45-minute commute means I’m leaving the house at 6.30-6.45, and getting up commensurately earlier. It’s not a massive change, but it’s enough that I’ve noticed it this week. I’m sure I’ll get back into the swing of things though.

In fairness, I’ve left home at earlier times than that though, for far longer commutes (in both time and distance) and getting home much later as well – although I have somewhat got out of the habit of those over the last couple of years.

It suits me for now though. I’d rather do 11am-8pm or similar, which would actually suit my body-clock, but that’s not on offer this time round. We’ll see though.


Fitbit Flex – Sleepy Time

Carrying on from yesterday’s post, I’m writing a bit about how I’m doing with the Fitbit Flex, a wristband pedometer and sleep monitor. Today it’s more about the sleep monitoring that the Flex does.

As with the pedometer side, the sleep monitoring can be a useful tool, but it’s not something to rely on absolutely.

The sleep monitoring is activated manually (which is usually OK, but could be a pain in the ass on occasion) and also needs to be manually deactivated – which is more of a pig, because if you forget, it screws the figures. It would be nice to have some automatic deactivation in there, although I suspect that the variables for it are pretty wobbly.

Based – I assume – on movement during the night, the Flex can report on “Sleep”, “Disturbed Sleep” and “Awake”. “Sleep” is – again, I assume – when the sleeper is motionless, as REM sleep paralyses the body. (which is why most people don’t sleepwalk, or do anything else physical that they’re dreaming about) “Disturbed Sleep” is when the sleeper is moving about. I’ve no idea how it discerns “Awake” though – it pegs my awake-in-bed time as ‘disturbed sleep’- so I assume that “Awake” means “Registered as sleeping, but actually walking around”.   As such, the categories are a bit rough, but at least provide an illustration of sleep quality – or lack thereof.

One thing I do find affects me though is actually looking at the results. (Which is a bit meta and ‘chaos theory’, but bear with me)  It’s one thing to feel like you’ve had a bad night, but it’s another one entirely to know it with the readings from the Flex. And yes, I could ‘leave it’ til later, but damn it, I’m interested.  However, it does make me feel more tired, more justified in being tired, with that knowledge of “Oh yeah, but I had a crap night”.  Seeing the information makes me aware of that crap night, and does affect how I feel during the day.   (Similar to how reading a horoscope first thing can sometimes subconsciously direct you towards doing the things ‘predicted’)

It is interesting though. It’s proven that I usually actually get by on 3.5-4 hours sleep per night most of the time, and that it’s really only when I’m on sub-three-hours that I feel shockingly bad. I have good nights (rare), bad nights (common) and very bad nights (thankfully not quite as common as I’d thought)

I’ll keep on using the Flex for this – as I’ve said, it’s a useful indicator, if nothing else. Whether I continue to be aware of the timings or not, bearing in mind how much that knowledge affects me, remains to be seen.


Monitoring Sleep

Over the years, I’ve kind of got used to sleeping really badly – although I’d still like to know the causes, and whether it really is as bad as I think/feel it is.

The reason I’m not sure is because – as I think I’ve said before – according to partners, sometimes I’ll have slept through the night, but woken up and been convinced I’ve had a bad night. Yes, I apparently manage to dream that I’m waking up and having a bad night. And yes, that is really really fucked-up, however you look at it.

Anyway, as part of the whole ‘weighing less’ part of this year, I was also wanting to monitor (or at least better monitor) my activity, steps-per-day and the like. So I’ve ended up ordering a FitBit Flex which should let me keep an eye on all of that at once.  It’ll also integrate with a couple of other apps on the phone etc., which will make for some interesting reading over time.  The only downside is that I’d have liked one that also allows me to check/monitor heart-rate (and really, why can’t you get a wearable wristband device that’ll do that? It can’t be that difficult, surely?) but there just isn’t anything like that around at the moment.   The closest would be the Pulse from Withings – but that doesn’t do the integration stuff, and doesn’t keep track of heartbeat in the way that I wanted.

I’m not relying on it, or assuming it’ll be the thing that changes everything for me – but it should at least answer some questions, particularly about how I sleep. And that at least will be interesting, and make it worth what I’ve paid. Anything else is a bonus, really.