Guess what? I've discovered a whole new way for my insomnia to present itself! As if I needed another one. -_- But then, it's not even entirely useless ... I have to admit that I'm relatively happy with how this week's been going so far, compared to other possible outcomes.

Basically I got out of bed on Monday morning and haven't been in it again since. o.O During the first night I didn't sleep at all, although I dozed off for a short while in the morning (less than an hour), then yesterday an accidental chair nap of epic proportions happened (I'm not sure how long it was exactly, but I wouldn't be surprised if it amounted to almost as much as a full night's sleep) and today was kind of similar, I think, except this time I completely lost track.

So how can that be good? Well. For one thing, I got stuff done. Not much of the kind of stuff that requires thinking or going outside, but stuff like dishes and laundry and occasionally even a bit of cooking. I am also expecting an important phone call, obviously (since the 15th has passed), and I have no idea when that's going to happen. If it takes you until the morning to get tired enough to sleep, but you don't want to risk missing a call, then having the option to nap even on an uncomfortable chair can be quite the relief! At least if you're anything like me. >.<

Sometime today or yesterday I did get a call from A in the middle of a nap and I found talking much easier than if I'd been woken up from deeper sleep. Plus I loved that I could just turn back around and ... I don't know, this is actually quite hard to explain ...

I think the key difference is that I'm not making an effort to sleep as much as possible in one go. So it doesn't matter if I'm hungry or need to pee, I might as well nap for half an hour before I decide whether to do something about it. And then for another if the answer is "no" at the moment. There's also none of the commitment to being awake or asleep that comes with brushing one's teeth and changing in or out of pyjamas, therefore it's perfectly fine if I decide to sleep and then can't - I'll just raise my head back up and continue browsing the internet. Or go to the bathroom. Nothing needs to be done in any particular order, there are no calculations, the time of day is almost irrelevant and I can go directly from napping to doing something useful if I feel like it. Normally I never manage to get anything done during the first hour after waking up.

Of course this is not at all healthy, however, and I'm not planning to continue with it on purpose. Tonight I'll stay awake once again for a number of probably silly reasons, but after 8 am I won't allow myself to nap anymore so that I won't have any trouble falling asleep when I finally go to bed. Which will be early in case I end up sleeping for ages. <_< I wish I had a sofa or at least a more comfortable chair, though ... the discomfort may be part of the reason why this works, but it sure as hell can't be good for my back. Looking forward to getting some true rest tomorrow.

You know what's funny? Ever since I mentioned having trouble getting the dishes done in time, I've been kind of ... doing that obsessively every few hours, and now the only dirty item left is my frying pan. It was neither on purpose nor even vaguely inspired by talking about it - basically, it just happened. That's how I do a lot of things, anyway. At any given moment, chances are high that I'm asking myself, "Why am I doing this now??" I know I've said this before somewhere on the internet and it may even have been here: I feel like my own actions are often completely unpredictable and all I can do is wait for them to happen. :|

Anyway, I'm glad I got this done. I have no idea why I felt like it or why it was possible, but it sure is nice that I did it.

Another strange thing is that I didn't sleep during any of that time. I mean, I spent three hours repeatedly dozing off on my chair (WILL THAT EVER STOP), but I didn't get any real sleep and it's already been almost 24 hours since the dozing, too. I had to stay awake because I needed groceries, and afterwards ... I only became more and more awake instead of doing the logical thing and progressing from post-shopping exhaustion back to tiredness. Nope. I didn't really start feeling tired again until a few hours ago, at which point it was already too late to still go to bed. Well, I suppose I could have said "screw it" and done it anyway, but that would have made being awake tomorrow a little difficult and Daniel wants to stop by to discuss Important Stuff then. (Like, Timo stuff and Finally Getting My Files Back stuff.)

What a mess.

Yesterday afternoon I had three good ideas. One was to call my mother and tell her about the Daniel situation (I apologise for the reference to a locked post in a public one), because she seemed like a safe person to talk to about it. I mean, he's probably never going to find out that I told her unless I admit it myself, so ... no harm done, right? I just needed to tell someone. We didn't continue our discussion from the last time we talked, but that was alright, too. It's still in the back of my head and I'm going to bring it up again sooner or later.

Incidentally, another of the ideas was related to that. I'd been unsure of what exactly to say to her and then it suddenly came to me. (This was before I called her, I think - or was it? I don't remember, but it wouldn't have made a difference. There wasn't enough time for both topics because she had stuff to do.) It's very simple: I am going to use the example that if you take two equally ambitious people and give them the exact same goal (which they are equally enthusiastic about) as well as the exact same obstacle to overcome in order to reach it, there is still a chance that one will succeed and one won't. Now, exchange the obstacle for a different one and maybe this time their roles will be reversed. Because it's not about motivation! People have unique strengths and weaknesses and if your problem happens to be something that you're bad at dealing with, it doesn't matter how much you want to overcome it. You will need time or help at the very least, if not both, and perhaps you'll have to change goals entirely. There. Try to argue with that. :P

(I get ridiculously excited when I discover a new way to explain something. I like to think of people who don't understand things as puzzles to solve. Getting closer to solving them is even more fun than finding the solution to an actual problem! Oh gods I just used my brain and it worked oh gods I can still be smart sometimes alert the fucking media I feel amazing oh gods.)

((This is exactly why my mother once suggested I become a lawyer.))

(((I do not wish to become a lawyer. I'd rather solve puzzles that don't involve arbitrary human-made laws, thanks.)))

( third idea cut for overall post length; sleep schedule stuff )

So I set my alarm to 8, went to bed at 6, needed to hit the "snooze" button three times despite having slept for 14 hours, and finally crawled out of bed feeling terrible physically but extremely pleased with myself. :D

Is this the part where I admit that my plan has failed? No, I refuse to do that. Instead, let's just say that my first attempt went wrong and I will have to start over. Nevertheless I'm a bit bummed that it happened as early as three days in. u_u

Sometime last night, I decided that I'd finally had enough of the noises that my bed was making, which I'd recently come to realise didn't actually continue when I was not in it anymore (I'm pretty sure that was the case at some point, though). So I pushed the bed into the middle of the room and placed the mattress on the floor in its usual spot. Then I went to the bathroom once more, drank some water and lay back down. I found it rather comfortable on the floor and listened to calming music for a while, plus you may remember that I'd been very tired to begin with - you'd think falling asleep should have been no problem, but then this is me we're talking about.

I gave up about two hours after I'd originally gone to bed. I suppose I could have only stayed awake for a limited time and then tried again, but in my tired and annoyed state I kind of forgot that was an option. Oops? (Well, I'm almost certain it wouldn't have worked, anyway.)

I will probably not be able to do a repeat performance of day one today, seeing as it's already 1 pm and I need to do a number of time-consuming things before I can go to bed. I don't think I'll manage all that within three hours. However, since I fell asleep on my chair this morning and thus did sleep a little, it may not actually be necessary to go to bed that early. I hope. I guess I could also set my alarm to 7 instead of 6. Haven't decided yet.

In any case I'll try again, whether that's another example of "doing the same thing over and over expecting different results" or not.

I have a Plan again. It was bound to happen eventually. It always happens.

Okay then.

Tonight I am going to stay awake. Tomorrow morning I'll buy a caffeinated beverage of some sort and, if the money I've got left in my purse turns out to be enough for those, valerian capsules.

Sometime in the afternoon I'll go to bed. Preferably at 4 pm, because then I would still wake up early even if I slept for more than 12 hours. I will place the drink on my beside table and set my alarm to 6 am just in case. 14 hours should really be enough, but if it feels like they weren't, that's what the caffeine is for.

Depending on whether I woke up closer to midnight or to the time of my alarm, I will decide how early to go to bed next. I'll take some valerian an hour before then whether I'll seem to need it or not - it's more to make sure that I'm going to be in the mood for sleep than anything else. (An idea that I had at the hospital.)

Rinse and repeat until I get to a number of hours slept that feels right, then pick an alarm time to stick with. That's it so far!

I didn't think I'd make another attempt at developing a proper sleep schedule anytime soon, but then I remembered that my meds were partly to blame for that ... and, well, I went off them a few days ago. I'd already been breaking the pills in half for weeks without feeling worse, so I figured I was better off without them.

I hope I won't be interrupted by some kind of weird, unforeseen event this time. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG??

My thoughts and feelings have been all over the place lately; I wouldn't even know where to start if I wanted to describe what's been going on in my head. Most of the time I was too confused by my body's sudden unpredictability in regards to sleep to pay attention to what was happening, anyway. I now know that part of the mess was likely my own fault due to taking my pills only sporadically, leading to either headaches or extreme tiredness depending on whether I took them that day or not, but that can't have been the only problem.

I wish I could sort out which perceived symptom was caused by what. It's probably impossible because everything overlaps and there is rarely just one answer, but I'm so fucking sick of being unable to tell how I should react to feeling sluggish and low on energy, for example. Is it physical fatigue? Do I need to take it easy for a day? Or is it a mental thing? Should I bite the bullet and force myself to do more than I feel like? How am I supposed to know??

What I've recently discovered is that even my actual muscle strength can vary greatly from day to day. Sure, I always knew that exercise was harder after I had slept badly and easier during a high energy phase, but I didn't know that these fluctuations could also happen randomly. Then I had an extremely good day and yet my arms were super weak. :| Also, one time I had no energy whatsoever and only wanted to exercise a tiny bit to relax my shoulders, but to my own surprise I did way more than I had planned, just because it was so easy. It's like, do I get any control over my own freaking life?!

But what troubles me the most is that there are things that I almost always lack the motivation for, and I don't know what this means. I'm talking about enjoyable things here, so it's not a matter of laziness, exactly. However it's too specific to be anything as general as depression, and I can't quite see how my OCD would have such an effect. It's more like my brain's been incorrectly programmed to view these things as harder to do or less fun than they actually are - how do I get around that?!

Okay, this post is made of questions. Have I mentioned that I'm confused?

(Dude. That's way too many tags for one post. What am I doing.)

I just wrote and then deleted this giant post about how I don't write as much as I'd like to anymore and how Tumblr is partly to blame for that, but then I realised what I was doing and it all sounded slightly too pathetic to be allowed to exist, so now you get this instead.

(It's not really Tumblr's fault. At least the pathetic things going on in my head are a little more complex than that.)

Basically what I wanted to get at is that I could do with some more structure in my life, which is to say any. Schedules and I don't mix very well, but there are other methods - I only have to pick one and try it out. Y'know, at some point in time when I'm significantly less tired than right now. -.-

(I had kind of hoped that I'd be able to metaphorically take some of the structure from the hospital home with me, by simply continuing to do things that I used to do there. It might even have worked if I hadn't concentrated on the sleep aspect too hard, but alas ...)

The trick is to remember that I mean to do this. I've got a strategically placed reminder for help, the rest is all crossed fingers and such.

Posts that are currently trapped in my brain: hopefully coming soon.

Just like last time, I slept terribly. This time there is a perfectly non-psychological explanation though: my bed creaks. And I don't mean when I move, I mean it creaks on its own. No idea why. It's not the first time that this happened, either - I remember the first time well because it took me a while to identify the source of the sound. I thought it might be coming from behind the wall or below the floor until I tested the bed theory by moving around in it to make it creak, and it sounded exactly the same.

So my bed creaks for no good reason. I don't even have to be in it, by the way. It just merrily continues creaking no matter where I am, at almost regular intervals. But only at night, that's the thing!! It has stopped by now. Maybe "creaking" isn't exactly the right word - it's more of a short crack, but "my bed cracks" sounds mildly alarming. LOL.

Maybe it's a humidity thing? That during the day the room gets a little damp because I usually let my laundry dry in there and the window is often open (it's rather humid outside at the moment)? Then at night I carry the clotheshorse into the living room, let some more air in and close the window. So maybe the bed starts to dry then and that causes the sound? I don't know, man.

I don't really have another place to let the laundry dry, though. The living room gets awfully cramped when I carry it in here, hence why I only do it before I go to bed. Of course, that could be solved by rearranging some things and making smarter piles (I still don't have enough storage options to put everything away), but I don't want to sit in a damp room all day, either! And what if this is not even the correct explanation?

My problems sometimes, guys. *shakes head*

Somebody please explain to me why I am awake? I slept somewhat normally for what, three days? You'd think I'd be allowed a little more time to recover, but no. Evidently we can't have that.

By now I have moved on from making smarter shopping lists to trying my hand at meal planning, which is kind of difficult to do if you had meant to start the next day, but then you stay awake so long that you need to eat again. WTF am I supposed to eat at this time of night? More sandwiches? I'm not going to cook at four in the morning, but my last meal was sandwiches already! Argh. I suppose I could always ... sacrifice some of that chocolate pudding for the greater good. Uhm. Yes.

Seriously though, meal planning. I appear to suck at it, but mostly because I can't concentrate. I suspect it would be just my thing, otherwise. Well, I like making lists.

There is really no point to this entry at all, is there? :P

There is a chance that, if both my mother and I get our money tomorrow today (oh right, past midnight), we might go to IKEA on Saturday. That would, of course, be awesome. However, I'm worried that it won't be possible even with the money, due to my usual fear that I'll sleep at the wrong time et cetera.

Which is why I am currently partaking in a lively debate inside of my own head.

One half of me is like, "Don't be silly! It's not too late yet, just go to bed already! I'm sure you'll be able to sleep!" And that's all nice and well, but then the other half goes, "But I'm enjoying myself here! I may be physically tired, but not mentally! And it totally is too late; this way I'll never manage to get up early on Saturday!"

Also I want chickpeas.

I guess the very fact that I am writing this has now sealed my fate, anyway. So I might as well ingest some caffeine, enjoy the rest of the Harry/Draco fanfic I am inexplicably reading (someone recommended it on Tumblr *shrugs*), hope that I won't be too tired to go to the bank come morning ... and eat some freaking chickpeas.