Dead Weight

 The jagged skyline

Verdant green and azure blue

Slices through the hills.

Thursday, February 10, 2022

 Sleeping has become a lot like taking care of my teeth as I’ve gotten older; way more complicated and time consuming than I ever imagined it could be and far more complicated than it ought to be.

When I was a kid we brushed our teeth before bed. That was it.

Now I floss, pick, massage, brush, squeegee, and rinse. Well, not quite. I stopped using a mouth rinse, though I’ll probably start up again, and I’m not sure there is such a thing as a tooth squeegee, but I do use a water-pick in the morning and that seems pretty close.

Similarly, when I was a kid I went to bed, and generally fell asleep. If I was having nightmares I sometimes went to sleep at the foot of my mom’s bed. But I don’t want to get into all that Freudian trauma today.

As I’m getting older, I’m finding it much more difficult to get a decent night’s sleep, which I partly understand yet am also very perplexed at.

I get up to go pee a lot. That part I get. But I work out hard and am just wiped out at the end of most days yet I’m having troubles sleeping.

I’m trying to stay away from the electronics at night and switching to an old fashion booklight to read myself to sleep.

I’m using a heating pad occasionally to heat my shoulders. Sometimes it works; sometimes not.

Lastly, I’ve gone to a weighted blanket. That’s also been hit or miss. Not sure why the weight feels good or makes a difference. There’s always that Freudian explanation somewhere lurking in the background. But again, I’m not going to lay back on the couch and free associate about it … unless that’ll help me sleep.