Who Needs Sleep?

...I would like to tell you my life story, as I think you are the only man who would understand.

Hi, w_n_s! It's now 11:26am. I got up at 6pm yesterday. I have to be at therapy at 2:30pm. If I take a nap, I will not be able to get back up in time.

The latest time I could have gone to bed and been reasonably confident I could get up at or before I needed to leave: 6am. I knew this, and yet I did not go to bed then. Not least because I would have only been awake for 12 hours.

And then there's the medication debate: when I'm going to bed late and have to get up at a fixed time, do I or do I not take the medication which is actually prescribed to me as an anxiolytic, but which has drowsiness as an intended side-effect? If I don't take it, I'll take longer to fall asleep, and therefore spend less time asleep, and I'll sleep lighter. If I do take it, I'll go to sleep sooner but find waking up more difficult. It's a med I should be taking every day, but skipping one day every now and then won't hurt me. Moot in this case because I didn't take it and didn't sleep, but it's part of the internal debate that contributes to my before bed procrastination.

Someone on another forum recommended this sleep game, and I've been playing it while winding down. They say most people fall asleep after five pairs. I find this mordantly amusing: I always lose count somewhere around twenty. It probably didn't help that I immediately figured out how to game the system: the first pair you think of will probably connected, but if you find a third item connected to the second in a different way, it will probably be unconnected to the first item. For instance, I start with apple tree. Mandarin orange is no good: it and apple are both fruits. Mandarin orange is connected to Mandarin Emperor. Apple tree and emperor are an unconnected pair. Next, emperor is connected to penguin, so they don't make a pair. Penguin is connected to buzzard. Emperor and buzzard are the next unconnected pair. And so on. I guess I could make it harder by requiring unconnected pairs to be an extra degree of separation apart, and to remember every preceding pair, but it just seems like a lot of work.