Sleep Deprived

My posts have been erratic. Questions and comments out of place. I realized this when I got up at 5:10pm today. I asked Shelagh about the titles of the stories and poems only to realize that she had posted them already.

Why am I so scattered and not with it? My sleep has been awful and out of sync. I am sleep deprived. So please bear with my stupid questions and comments until I can get this sorted out.

Shelagh, if you feel the need you can delete any posts that appear to be from the outer limits. I will understand.

Just don't chalk my responses up to stupidity, please. Thank you.

Sleep deprivation will do it, but I haven't noticed any of your posts being from the outer limits. Just how far out are the outer limits? I'd like to know to see if I'm there yet.

I have felt on occasion my questions have been. Like the question I asked Shelagh when it was so obvious to everyone that the answer was already there.

In the outer limits? Well, I guess whatever a person considers 'way off base'. I know now you are going to ask what is 'way off base'. Now that you mention it, perhaps it hasn't been outer limits, just the twilight zone.

Dear Sue,
Funny that you bring up this subject. I was about to say something about my own feelings tonight. I am a little on the bleary side. I had not noticed your own dear self being in the outer limits.

Once in a while, the piles of little bits that are our lives obliterate our mental flow. I wonder about that. Perhaps it is a sort of constipation.

When I was very young, a good cry could clear me out. I never cry much any more. I find that it only swells my eyes and clogs up my sinus and depresses me for a day.

I am a person who has to have stuff to do every day. Once in a while, nothing to do is a treat. But, mostly, I have to have something to look forward to doing. Little things work, too. Today, I picked the green beans and did the cleaning and snapping and washing and blanching and freezing. By the time I was done, I considered it was too much to do. hahahah. At least by my self.

I overwhelm my self with stuff to do between the nursery, the house cleaning, the chores, the cooking, the animals, the gardening, and yet I would have it no other way. My day is full to the end and on into the evening. I know, I am nuts.

Love,
Betty

Dearest Betty,

I am the same way. Always having to do something, on or off the computer. My mind never stops. A respite once in a whle is fine. It needs to be just that: a respite.

I can't sleep until my head actually hits the keyboard or I wake up having the same page from a book in front of me. I have always slept differently from everyone else, even in school. Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it wrong. Just is.

I don't seem to fit into society's sleep patterns. This concerns most people; sometimes it even concerns my husband. It doesn't concern me. It just is.

However, I am finding that it is now interfering with my thought processes. Is it just the sleep deprivation or added stress, or...? Who knows. I am attributing it to the sleep. No sleep, I become irritable. Irritability makes for thoughtless mistakes.

Thank you, Betty, for your post. I needed it.
Blessings from my spirit to your spirit!
Sue

Dear Sue,
Rest.

Often I cannot sleep. I am not a drug taker, but a Goodys PM helps me once in a while and other than that, when my neck is up around my ears, a heating pad will help. Soothing and warm. I think that if a person had someone who would massage their feet when they are sleepless, it would be heaven. Feet kind of connect to eyeballs and that is where sleep really begins melting down the mind. Ahhhh. Foot to eye and then to brain. I feel better already just thinking about it.

Love,
Betty

Sue I have not noticed anything odd, just that you have not been around as much as you sometimes are.

Sweet dreams to you and Betty - and if sweet dreams are not available then hopefully pleasant thoughts will be!

Dear Pam,
Talking of sweet dreams!

I wonder where dreams come from in the mind.
Do they come from random sights, snippits from day to day or just out of the infinite cosmic soup.

There I was, just strolling along. No trees, no grass, hot, hot and blue, blue sky with only a heat vibration in the air. There was not one thing on the horizon but blue and haze. All of a sudden, I hear a whirring noise. I look up and see a large aluminum pole that is powered by a big fan motor on one end. The balance of the thing was a shieky looking guy sitting on a rope swing. on the other end was an F150, a bicycle, and a port o let. All these appendages were making visable waves in the wind moving the cloud vapor around.

Slowly this whole apparatus and person landed in front of me. The sands shifted under the force of the fan revealing a red brick lined chamber that led down below the sands. It was in ruins from years of natural forces.

I could not understand the language that he spoke or how the big aluminum pole could carry so much and how he could be a smiling person in that heat.

It was so hot. I said, off the top of my head, that if I were to do anything with that cave lined in red brick, it would be to put a big fan in there.

Ahhhh, he and I communicated. I told him about the largest fan I ever saw. He wanted it posthaste.

That is when his daughter got out of the F150.

What faith.

Love,
Betty

Betty, that is a lovely dream. Were you warm at the time?

Sue, my sleep is often erratic too. I went to sleep at 12:30 this morning, and got back up at 4:30! Perhaps I just need a nap. If you in the twilight zone, I must be with you, because your posts make sense to me. I have always been a little 'off' as far as what some consider 'normal'. I say if it is normal for me, it's normal. Like you say, it just is. I know that when I get tired enough, my mind will shut up and allow the sleep to come. It is usually the voices in my head and thoughts that keep me awake. Meditation sometimes helps! Sleep tight, and sweet dreams!

Pam, the irritablity caused by the lack of sleep keeps me from coming on forums. I am afraid I may say something that I wouldn't normally say. Plus I can't seem to get my sh.. together.

Betty, I slept most of the day. When confronted with something that caused irritablity I 'took to my room'. Fitfully slept most of the day, the rest of the time I read. Made for an unusual day, to say the least.

Zada, I am glad to hear there are others out there like me. Meditation doesn't help me, unfortunately. As soon as I try thoughts keep coming and coming and I can't get anywhere I need to be to meditate. It's like, "yea her mind is open. We can shove all kinds of thoughts in there." I have been known to go 56 hours, then 3 hours sleep, then up for 36 hours, then 6 hours sleep, etc. Until I finally crash and get what I need. Then it starts all over again. Believe me, planning appts is difficult. Unless I get really out of whack I know I am good for afternoon and evening activities. I plan all my activities then.

Thank you, Everyone, for your input. It does help to share it here with you. I just wanted to make you all aware why my posts might be a little off.

Sleep well, ladies, sleep well. When the body grows weary enough it will demand sleep.

My husband is no expert when it comes to sleep and sleeping disorders but he does understand the way the body works, teaches anatomy, is very knowledgable in the fields of sport and exercise physiology and writes books on biomechanics (his expertise).

Often, I have problems sleeping and will stay up into the early hours of the morning to tire myself out. He maintains that resting is the next best thing to sleeping. The body does not gain as much from non-sleep resting as it does from being completely asleep, but resting is better than carrying on until you crash out. He would strongly recommend that this is a bad life-style choice (and it is a chocie).

So if I can't sleep, I rest. Long hours lying awake are tedious and I'm really gald to get up but it seems to work. The next time I go to bed at the usual time, I fall asleep within an hour of going to bed.

The answer seems to be that, no matter how boring it may be, going to bed at approximately the same time every night (and that might be before or after midnight) is better for you than staying awake. If you can't sleep, you should rest -- but don't get up. You may have to sustain a great deal of boredom by not sleeping but your body will benefit from the rest.

So very true, Dick. But it is occasionally embarrassing to fall asleep during something important. I have been known to fall asleep in front of the computer, my hand on the mouse! One time I fell asleep walking across a room.

Sue, sometimes I must simply tell my mind to "shut the 'f' up!" (to play on Betty's thread). Focussing on sounds helps sometimes. Do you have a 'dream machine'?

Shelagh, that is so true. Resting is the next best thing. But sometimes I 'forget' that. It's like the mind is so busy it forgets to tell the body to lie down!

I've always found it harder than others to sleep lying for an hour or two before I can get to sleep but as I've gotten older it seems only to get worse. I put it down to an over active imagination because no matter how much I try to think of nothing so I can sleep I find my brain won't allow me to as it throws up more crazy ideas and fantasies. Ach well nothing for it just need to write the best ones down and hope it's a winner. Hehehe

Reading the comments about sleep only confirms that we all need sleep, but how to get it can be a problem. I think regularity, as Shelagh indicated, is the best solution. For those who say, "if I can't sleep, why should I just lie in bed?" We've all been there. For some, reading puts them to sleep. I know that when my wife can't sleep, she picks up her book and before long she's back to sleep. For me, getting up is no solution. I have found that by just staying put, eventually I will fall asleep again - usually when it's about time to get up. I get one of those "sleepless nights" at least once per week. Since it is not something foreign to me, when it happens I take it in stride knowing that it will pass.
Having said all that, there is one thing that does cause us to lose sleep. Having problems buzzing around in our heads will not allow us to get our rest. Sometimes there are things we plan to do and don't want to forget to do. The solution, before going to bed, write down on paper the things that are on your mind. Make a list of the things you plan to do the next day. By clearing your mind knowing that you have a plan, you will rest much better.

Those are my few cents.

I admit to being one of those authors who can't sleep when I'm in the midst of a key scene or even in new story start. I lay awake working out plot twists and scenes until I finally have to get up and get my thoughts on-screen. Only then can I get to sleep, and of course whatever I noted down during the night is subject to revision in the light of day.

Jim Woods
www.ultrasw.com/jwoods

I'll put in my two penny's worth, for a long time I could only sleep
3/4 hours at a stretch, but now and I don't know if its due to whatever
is wrong with me I seem to sleep for 7/8 hours. Usually I'm messing
about on my laptop for most of the day, then at around 7 p.m. I make my
self somthing to eat, presently as I can't cook due my gammy left hand,
it's cold meats and salad.

Then I watch 1 disc of the Stargate Atlantis, usually 4 episodes and go
bed, well now I'm sleeping on the couch in the RV around midnight and
wake around 7 or 8

I love to get up in the middle of the night, and be there in all the quiet. Sometimes I read, write, wander the internet, come here.

Carol