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"My head's full of mud but my limbs are full of bees*"
(* = buzzing, not stinging)
That's the best description I've come up with for the way my insomnia feels a lot of the time, and I'm curious whether it resonates with anyone else.
More often than not, it's not "useful" insomnia, where I can at least get up and get something done. My eyes hurt. They want to go to sleep. My head is foggy and from my chest up feels like it's full of something heavy, like mud. But my arms legs are literally tingling, and have been since around 11 last night. Last night I spent about a third of my time in bed, a third in self-exile to the couch where my legs twitching and bouncing of their own accord wouldn't keep![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
preraphaelite up, and a third sitting in the living room staring at my laptop, trying to get something done for work in anticipation of being useless on the morrow.
I looked up "restless leg syndrome", and it doesn't seem to be that. People with RLS describe a sort of throbbing ache that is helped by movement, while for me it's more a compulsion to move, like my extremities are in overdrive while the rest of me is trying to shut down.
My insomnia is not always like this, but the phenomenon is frequent enough that I think it bears noting. Has anyone else out there experienced this? What did you do?
I've started getting downright superstitious about what I eat. I was hungry late last night, so around 10 I had and apple with raisins and peanut butter. "Brilliant", I tell myself in hindsight, "that was basically just so much sugar and protein"... but could that possibly be enough to cause this? I'm going to try keeping a proper food/sleep journal, so I can "do science at it", as preraph puts it, and see what I find.
The advice I see online for similar things is "quit caffeine for a month and see if it helps". That's probably good advice, and I'm going to try it too, but a) I don't consume that much by most people's standards (though I did drink a couple of cups in the late afternoon yesterday), and even if I did quit caffeine, there's still my prescription adderall, and though I could quit it too, I'm loathe to futz with that too much because I think it actually does keep me (relatively) focused.
But then, I think maybe that's the crux of the issue: the things that clear out the mud anger the bees, which makes me muddier the next day. Vicious cycle indeed.
Anyway, was planning to work from home so I could pass out when my body finally decides to do so, but of course I look at my calendar and today is Have All The Meetings day, so here I am at work. Sometimes I'm get to a point where I loop all the way around to being too tired to get distracted, so let's see what I can do...
(* = buzzing, not stinging)
That's the best description I've come up with for the way my insomnia feels a lot of the time, and I'm curious whether it resonates with anyone else.
More often than not, it's not "useful" insomnia, where I can at least get up and get something done. My eyes hurt. They want to go to sleep. My head is foggy and from my chest up feels like it's full of something heavy, like mud. But my arms legs are literally tingling, and have been since around 11 last night. Last night I spent about a third of my time in bed, a third in self-exile to the couch where my legs twitching and bouncing of their own accord wouldn't keep
preraphaelite up, and a third sitting in the living room staring at my laptop, trying to get something done for work in anticipation of being useless on the morrow. I looked up "restless leg syndrome", and it doesn't seem to be that. People with RLS describe a sort of throbbing ache that is helped by movement, while for me it's more a compulsion to move, like my extremities are in overdrive while the rest of me is trying to shut down.
My insomnia is not always like this, but the phenomenon is frequent enough that I think it bears noting. Has anyone else out there experienced this? What did you do?
I've started getting downright superstitious about what I eat. I was hungry late last night, so around 10 I had and apple with raisins and peanut butter. "Brilliant", I tell myself in hindsight, "that was basically just so much sugar and protein"... but could that possibly be enough to cause this? I'm going to try keeping a proper food/sleep journal, so I can "do science at it", as preraph puts it, and see what I find.
The advice I see online for similar things is "quit caffeine for a month and see if it helps". That's probably good advice, and I'm going to try it too, but a) I don't consume that much by most people's standards (though I did drink a couple of cups in the late afternoon yesterday), and even if I did quit caffeine, there's still my prescription adderall, and though I could quit it too, I'm loathe to futz with that too much because I think it actually does keep me (relatively) focused.
But then, I think maybe that's the crux of the issue: the things that clear out the mud anger the bees, which makes me muddier the next day. Vicious cycle indeed.
Anyway, was planning to work from home so I could pass out when my body finally decides to do so, but of course I look at my calendar and today is Have All The Meetings day, so here I am at work. Sometimes I'm get to a point where I loop all the way around to being too tired to get distracted, so let's see what I can do...
