I haven’t been sleeping very well of recent. I’m wondering why.
I go to bed at around 12 to 1 am and after a couple of hours I wake up and I can’t go back to sleep.
When I was in university, sleeping 10 hours was a cinch and I’d enjoy every bit of my sleep. Many years later, my brain doesn’t seem to want to “turn off” for that long.
I actually read a self-help book on how to sleep less. Self-help books are usually full of advice that you would probably say “duh...” to but if you can get a couple of things out of it, that’s probably enough to improve your life ever so slightly.
The book mentioned ideas about setting a “wake up” goal. The example that the book gives is when you’re going to take a vacation, you generally wake up and get out of bed immediately because you’ve got to get down to business. You’ve been planning the trip for months and this is the grand moment.
Well, same goes for your everyday life. You’ve got to convince your brain that whatever task that you’re going to try to accomplish in the morning is going to change your life. If you have the right attitude (or you train your brain well enough), waking up shouldn’t be a big problem.
Other tips that the book gives is to not drink too much before going to bed (I do this almost every night), having a good bed and so on.
Well, I guess the main thing is to give yourself a reason to be productive in life.
This morning I woke up at 3 am and I got out of bed after realizing I wouldn’t be falling asleep anytime soon. I went to my desk and I started putting in color in an illustration project that I’ve been working on for what seems like ages. I’ll finish this project eventually.
I continued doing this for three hours and then decided it would be best to hit the hay again.
Of recent, I can’t recall dreaming too much which might be a good thing. The dreams that I have recently tend to be a bit stressful. It seems that a lot of people from my past are appearing in them, especially those that I met in Japan.
My dreams are sometimes in Japanese which is quite interesting. After living in Japan for nine-years, my dreams have become more diverse.
But a dream is a dream and usually I forget them after time.
When I’m motivated I actually try to draw my dreams. It helps me remember them.
Well, I didn’t get enough sleep last night so I would say I’m half asleep right now.
Hopefully this blog write-up hasn’t put you to sleep yet.
