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Btw, do you realise we will/would go out of business, if we cure our insomnia…?! D'oh!!!
Oh! Just so I don't forget and neglect my sleep journal in all this excitement 😎
I fell asleep at about 7am (I think – can't quite work it out… I'm pretty sure that the last time I got up to have a snack cos my stomach was grumbling was at 6:30am (kitchen clock – my alarm is facing the wall) but not sure – maybe I'm hallucinating in my insomniac stupor…) and have now woken up at 1:00 o'clock lunchtime…
It feels weird to have suddenly sorted out “what to do” and “what not to do” when I can't sleep at night – to now realise that my bigger challenge is working out what do do/ not to do when Ihit one of those very tired/ sooky patches during the day… Well, I guess I will learn, if not by a smarter way, then by trial and error…
Oh, P.S. Teddy, I think you can use “Photobucket” to put a picture on your computer online and then upload it with that URL. I've not tried it before, but it's meant to be relatively simple..
Have and easy day
XXX
Groggy
I love it! My sleepless brain has been thinking along similar lines 🙂
I have to admit that I had the Etsy shop idea, cos in my migraine forum there's a woman thinking of starting up an Ebay Shop. And someone suggested Etsy to her instead and I suggested “Oh, why don't you (also) stock products for migraineurs?”
Anyway, one of the forum members posted some infos for her about using Etsy, so I'll copy and paste them here…
(Oh, btw, my photos are from on-line… I used the image function – that little square with the green inside on the menu thingee – and put in the URL of the picture… Not sure how to upload one from your own computer…
Here's that Etsy info:
Are you an Arts & Crafts person? Do you handmake anything that you think others might like? I would encourage you to look around Etsy and see what people are selling. Maybe you could find something that would start off as a hobby and turn into a home business. I love it! I make my beads at home in my garage when I feel good enough to work. Taking photos and posting on the computer is very easy. Maybe you could have someone show you how to do it the first time and help you get comfortable.
Check out YouTube
* How to Start an Etsy Shop (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI0poTpkjB8)
*How to List a Product (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr2mdN3gt6M)
There are a ton of tutorials on YouTube that may be interesting for you. Etsy also has a ton of tutorials. Check out the one on taking photos (http://www.etsy.com/community/online-labs).
With regards to shipping. I would recommend setting up an account with UPS, Fed-Ex, US Postal Service. You can actually weigh you box at home (on a bathroom scale) and print a shipping label with postage prepaid. Then it's just a matter of taking you box to UPS/Fed-Ex/USPS and dropping it off. No standing in line and waiting. You can even ask you carrier if you can leave the boxes at you garage door for pickup. Since the postage has already been paid online, they should be willing to pick it up.
I don't sell on Ebay anymore. A lot of people have switched over from “Fee-Bay” to Etsy. It's cheaper and your listing stays online for a month for 20 cents. Ebay's listings are only for a week.
Yes!! I was thinking Insomnia Productions – so “snap!!!” Our motto could be “Products made with love. And without sleep.”
We could get fellow insomniacs on board! (Cos I'm too slow to produce much myself…!) My best friend has a form of insomnia where she can fall asleep fine, but she wakes up at 4am or 5am, panicking about the day ahead… I could ask her and other friends if they want to join in…
And I love the idea of “sleeping partner” – you crack me up!!
Sweet dreams Teddy!
This is the material I'm using for my purse, btw…
It's that Mexian celebration of the Day of the Dead (DÃa de los Muertos)
[img]http://s31.dawandastatic.com/Product2/37534/37534445/long/1352315268-962.jpg?20121124091119[/img]
Hey Teddy,
we should get creative, if your insomnia sticks around (God forbid), and start an “Etsy” shop and become creative insomnia entrepreneurs and make millions with the crafts we produce in the wee hours… hahaha 😮
Ach, Teddy, guess who's awake….?
Yeah, not surprisingly after today's nap-marathon, it's me…
I've been resting (which is what I've decided to do when exhausted and in bed but sleep is not happening) but after doing that (and listening to some music and some guided meditations) I've decided to get up, after 5 hours of rest.
I had been thinking about getting up earlier to do something (anything!) but I couldn't think of anything fun… my brain just kept coming up with “work” tasks along the lines of “wouldn't it be great if you got that done, then you could tick it off your to-do list…” and somehow, getting up to do work just felt the opposite of tempting!!
So now I just remembered that I had recently ordered some material on-line which I want to use to sew a purse/ wallet custom-made to my notion of what I need a purse to have and what not… Sewing all those different compartments for coins, notes, credit cards, membership cards etc etc is going to be damned complicated, so I don't know how well I'm going to do with this, in the middle of the night!!!
But at least it's not tasks like “do the dishes”, “sort out the recycling”, “do the tax return”, etc!!
I'm happy that I'm not stressing at least…
Talk later…
Groggy
Hi Tired Teddy
I am glad that your medical appears to have gone okay. Stick to your guns on this issue – don't let them treat you crap!
You and your fellow sound really nice and fun – how brilliant of you to have such postive energy, despite insomnia issues.
I'm not sure if I can follow your advice re not being embarassed about sleep issues… I'm sure I will get there, but at the moment I do still think “Cripes, how embarassing!!”
Especially what happened today…. (cringe)… After waking up from a 2 hour nap just before 3pm, I felt SO sooky and tired from the last few (almost) sleepless nights, that I fell asleep AGAIN. I had made a good effort of doing a self-compassion meditation for half an hour (there are some really great guided ones you can google by Kristen Neff) and had even set the timer for 30 minutes… and while I started off well, I fell asleep during it, didn't hear the timer and slept through til 7pm, when my boyfriend came home and woke me for dinner.
But I AM working on this! It's 1) babysteps and 2) sometimes two babysteps forward, one babystep back…
Despite having had so much sleep during the day today (I work freelance from home and until the first contract job for the new year comes in I'm still on “holidays” and just doing some office work/ accounting/ filing etc…) I'm still feeling ready for another 10 hours of sleep tonight and am already in bed at 9:30pm…
I will just quickly check Martin's email for the day and then try turning in for the night… If I am sleepy, I will doze off and if I am “just” exhausted, then I will do some self-compassion meditations to adress that issue…
Thanks for hearing me and for your kind thoughts.
Thinking of you and our fellow insomniacs out there.
Sweet dreams everyone
Groggy
Ugh, bit embarassed to admit this, but I just accidentally had a 2 hour nap on the sofa/ couch.
I'm a bit divided now as to whether to feel a) good, for having gotten a nice snooze, 😎 annoyed and disappointed that I didn't manage to effectively prevent this happening and c) sad that it was just 2 hours, because right now I feel like I could use another 10….!
So this is me, in another “challenging moment” during the day. I'm feeling sleepy, sooky and a bit cold (which is why snuggling under a blanket here is sooo nice right now). I'm VERY VERY tempted to continue napping, even though I know it's not what I'd promised myself I would do.
Last night, just before drifting off to sleep, I thought “Oh my god, during the day, I use sleep the way an alcoholic uses alcohol – when I can, I *abuse* sleep as a way of escaping from painful feelings…” and then I realised that this is pretty much what I do at night too – I think what I WANT to happen is that after a day that has left me (emotionally) exhausted, I want sleep to kick in so that I have relief, so that somone “switches my day off” (God, I sound like Michael Jackson and his Propofol… – I wonder whether his insomnia was a big issue on insomnia forums around the world, when those details came in the news…?)
Anyway, I think that at night, instead of allowing SLEEPINESS to drift me off to sleep, I let things like exhaustion, grumpiness, feeling worn out, wanting the world to go away for a while, wanting some peace and quiet, etc. make me think that sleep is the solution…
So I lie in bed, CRAVING sleep… but for all the wrong reasons!
I was pretty shocked when I realised this yesterday.
Even though, when my boyfriend has seen me looking exhausted in the evenings and suggested “Why don't you go to bed?” I have so often explained “I'm tired, but not *sleepy* – that's a big difference”… and that should've made me realise why the difference is so significant sooner, I still didn't clue into it, until I went through my insomniac stress and ranting last night and read Martin's Day3 email… Only then did the connection fall into place in my head.
So yes, I think I'm someone who misuses sleep. (Which sounds awful, but I swear that I never realised that feeling exhausted was not the same as feeling sleepy… to my naive mind, exhaustion seemed like the perfect reason to sleep!!!)
So that shocked me a bit, because it means that my insomnia and sleep issues go deeper than I had thought and because I thought “How on earth am I going to change a habit like that????” Because exhaustion does a pretty good show of convincing myself that what I want/ need/ crave is SLEEP…
So I'm going to have to think about this… Am going to have to try and find some approaches to this, that might work.
XXX Groggy
Hi Teddy,
your post just came through – telling me not to apologise, which is the first thing I did in my post above – so, haha, well done, you read my mind too!
Thanks for the words of encouragement and comfort. That's so sweet. How lovely for you to have the energy to write that, after a night of non-perfect sleep yourself.
I think I'm generally not too harsh on myself – I guess I just find it embarassing to post my most boring, self-pitying, inane drivvel here, in the middle of a sleepless night… But my thinking is, that unless I get some of this stuff *out* (of my head, by voicing it) for a change, then it's going to stay with me for many more years of insomnia to look forward to…
So I'm trying to see this as a therapeutic task…. Get all my ridiculous, boring, repetitive night-time anxieties out of the way, in order to move on to better, more meaningful things… So I'm hoping by posting my midnight misery, I'm going to be able to leave it behind and move beyond it.
So this is not just me venting and whining ad nauseum… rather, I hope it's an ugly looking phase in an otherwise constructive process.
Anyway, I think I'm too *groggy* still to write more for now.
Love your sense of humor Teddy
I hope that mean medical goes well – please let us know, if you're feeling like sharing it.
XXX
Groggy
Apologies for getting so down in the dumps yesterday…
My sleepy patch at 4:30am ended up doing it's trick and I fell into a restful, soothing slumber.
I woke up at 10:20am (seems I didn' hear my alarm – I had set only one of them today) – so that's 6 whole hours of restful sleep. Lovely.
I'm feeling much better today.
I stil feel drowsy and tired tho, so the day is going to be a challenge – with those occasional rough patches of getting over-emotional and miserable.
So I will try and catch them and see what they're about and work out how to soothe myself when they strike.
Thank you for allowing me the room to have written here last night. I know that it was boring, confused, tired rambles – but it was valuable for me to have a place to write about it – it's different to just having this stuff go round and round in your head for hours on end.
Wishing all a constructive, easy day
Groggy
So if I'm understanding Martin's mails correctly (and with my non-functioning brain there is a good chance I'm not tho) I can pretty much let whatever happens at night happen… and my focus needs to be on my days, making sure I don't nap there…
Not sure if there's anything I should be avoiding at night… things that are considered sleep-unfriendly? Tho things like letting some boring documentary run on TV or leaving a lamp on is very soothing for me and *helps* me sleep – so I'm not even sure if there's such an objective way of determining what's sleep-unfriendly to whom… There are studies, I guess, that show what works for the average person… but if I'm not similar enough to the average person then those things might not work for me anyway…
I guess it would be a relief not to pressure myself at night… Then at least my nights would be relatively hassle-free, which would leave me better equipped to deal with the day's stressors…
I'm thinking this does maybe entail that I have a disposition to insomnia in some way… just as a diabetic has to blood sugar issues…
I've never truly dealt with my tiredness during the day tho. Rather just gotten emotional and stressed and wished it would stop and go away.
I can't really imagine what my life and I would be like if I were to accept my tiredness and try to live a good life despite it.
What I know is that the day will often seem to crawl and that I will get bouts of exhaustion, helplessness, teariness, and feeling unbearably miserable.
Wherever possible, I seek means of escape whenever that happens… and sometimes sleep is an option of escaping.
So maybe I'm just scared of the bevvy of painful emotions that tiredness and lack of sleep bring with them. Including the utter helplessness of knowing that an exhausted, sleep-deprived mind is hardly able to cope with them… and that they feel extra scary cos I'm not able to put up any defenses…
Yeah, I think that might be the right train of thought. That the (approximately hourly) flare ups of negative emotion that happen on days with sleep-deprivation, are what I need most to learn how to deal with. And helplessness is a big issue with these flare ups. These emotions are so strong and I feel so weak due to the tiredness, that I basically just look for some place to flee, I try to run and hide… instinct, I guess.
At the moment I can't really conceive of a way of dealing with them. But seeing as they are the main side-effect of my insomnia, I guess I will start by posting about them, when they happen tomorrow or the next days. I guess then I will learn in-vivo what is going on with them and what my line of defence could be.
I get migraines too, and I have a sort of “toolbox” – a checklist, really, of techniques and tricks that help soothe my migraines and lessen their intensity. I guess I will need to find some similar methods for dealing with these attacks of negative emotion/ helplessness/ extreme tiredness.
Maybe crawling under the covers to have a sook is still an option – but with the difference of setting a timer for say 20 minutes… So that I don't get stuck there, feeling sorry for myself and seeking even more escape in a nap.
I will post more about this tomorrow. I'm hitting a *mildly* sleepy patch right now…
Haha, that's cool!
Not sure I can do a MONTH of this… cripes…
I'm about to give up on sleep for the night, I think… It doesn't feel like it's happening…
I'm in a calm phase right now… as if I don't have a care in the world… Weird what a lot of up-and-down this tiredness entails.
I'm driving myself a bit nuts tho… and I hope not many ppl are bothering to read my sleep-deprived drivvel… That would be a bit embarassing and then I would feel like I need to raise my standard here… but am entirely unable to do so, haha.
Ah well, this is labelled a Journal, so I guess everyone reads a journal at their own peril 😉
I wonder if I do a post every 10 minutes from now, how many posts I will have written by sunrise….. OH DEAR!!!! (Sorry Martin, I hope this is not hogging too many bits or bytes or kilobytes)
So, now that I'm even more wide awake than at midnight and no longer feeling upset, I am considering getting up and doing something after all.
I wonder tho, how I will not get frustrated at everything being done in slow motion, 10 times a slowly as usual and me being too ditzy to work out the simplest things… I am used to being able to handle things efficiently and well when I'm not so tired, so I think I lose patience with myself when in this insomniac state… It seems so BOOOOOORING and mind-numbingly futile to spend an hour doing something I would otherwise get done in 10 minutes… Well, I will try and see how I go.
Apologies Teddy and Martin and anyone else putting themselves through reading this, that I've slipped into self-pity and being down… I don't suppose it will last for ever, so more positive posts to follow tomorrow, maybe…
Haha, yes well, I feel like my insomnia is this annoying little monster saying “Let's play. Let's chat. Let's watch some TV. Let's go and make a midnight snack….”
Often I don't mind my insomnia *that* much (the not sleeping) I often give into it and read or find something entertaining to do. In theory I don't mind staying up all the time, if I didn't get so TIRED.
So yeah, I guess to me it's just a *little* monster, not a sinister one…
