Insomnia Blues

There are days, like today (writing this late on Friday night, or early on Saturday morning depending on how one looks at it), where I wonder if my trouble sleeping is something physical. I’m not saying that I would jump at a cure, which would put a severe dent in my output, but it would be nice to know for sure – with the option, at some point in the future, to be able to do something about it.

Exercise was meant to alleviate the chronic insomnia.

Before you point out “it doesn’t work like that,” yes, I’m well aware of that fact now.

At the time I started, however, I figured that doing a bunch of push-ups, or anything else that popped into my head, was going to assist me in getting more than four hours of sleep. It really doesn’t matter what I do, the numbers don’t go up. I can do seven or eight hundred push-ups, thinking that’s going to tire me out, yet a short while later I feel like I could do it all over again. It really isn’t fair.

So the answer as to why I can’t sleep can’t be psychological. Not if I’m able to add that to my routine without discernible effect. My body is obviously broken – I’m producing either too much or too little of a key chemical which is ruining my ability to sleep. There was a lady at the gym – and I’m not sure if she was a trainer, or an assistant, or what she was – who told me, as I’d only begun ramping up my physical activity, that I shouldn’t do too much to begin with.

That really didn’t sound very encouraging. So yes, I went ahead and did the very thing I was specifically told not to do. And I still didn’t nab myself a good night’s sleep. When you get close to tears because you can’t sleep, which has been the case a few times in the last year or two, anything which might help is on the table. I’m still not ruling anything out.

While a lot of people seem to swear by trackers (Fitbit, or whatever), I’ve merely been setting the timer on my ‘phone – a simple and effective tactic, and one which I really like because it doesn’t cost a thing. As exercise is in addition to everything else it wasn’t part of the budget which I’m valiantly attempting to stick to (although it hasn’t held this month, for numerous reasons), and I don’t want to start messing with the numbers to accommodate further expenditure.

I’m probably in the best shape I’ve been in my entire life. Still not sleeping, mind you, but concentrating on the pluses seems a better use of my excessive energy than focusing on what isn’t working out for me.

This isn’t coming cheap. One teeny tiny fact which everyone neglected to inform me of was how much more I needed to eat. Being told “you should work out” is fine (if annoying), but the knock-on cost of eating more is slightly worrying. While it may sound awesome to eat all the time, I’m always somewhere between ‘why won’t my stomach stop rumbling’ and ‘I can’t eat another mouthful.’

Often these feelings arrive together, tormenting me with the fact that I’m in need of nourishment but don’t want to eat – an additional psychological torture I could really do without.

Being more active hasn’t boosted my immune system either, as I got knocked on my ass with the flu over Christmas.

And that’s another thing which nobody seemed ready to offer commentary on before all this: after a week of feeling as if Death himself had gripped bony fingers around my scrotum and squeezed, the momentum of my routine was shattered – I was barely able to do half of what I could the week prior without getting all shaky and dripping with sweat, although tenacity, OCD, and the dread of getting up in front of a crowd soon got me back on track. That week, though… Damn. I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think my arms and chest got visibly, albeit marginally, smaller. In one week.

And then there’s the other thing. This might be connected to the insomnia, as it only seems to happen when I’ve gone a couple of days without any sleep at all, but that may be coincidence. In fact, it could be any number of things, as I haven’t been keeping a record of what and when I eat – that’s far too anal, even for me.

There was a weird “glittery effect” which is extremely difficult to describe other than a half-circle of shimmering lights at the uppermost side of my right eye, and this initially started when I was drawing. The first time it happened I thought I was having a stroke or something (don’t mock), but as it went away after half an hour or so I put it out of mind. Then it happened again (at a point where I hadn’t been sleeping once more), with the same duration, more or less. As it hasn’t killed me already it can’t be all that important…

It only seems to return when I’ve gone without sleep, and as this is a New Thing, previously unheard of, I’ve been reticent to get it checked in case there needs to be any rest period involved.

I can’t afford to take any time off.

Most of the year has been sketched out, and I can’t fall behind any farther than I am. It is all well and good to have people telling me to stay on top of my health, but bills don’t stop landing at my feet merely because I’m not at the top of my game. It is one of a few things bugging me which, when I have a financial cushion against unexpected events, I’m definitely going to see someone about – just not straight away.

There’s one particular thought which has been rattling around in my head, and likely adding to all the other issues – does being awake longer, on average, than most other people mean that I am, effectively, older than my age group? Seriously, this is something that has actually been a burning question for a while now. Is it like dog years, in that an inability to sleep properly can screw up the chronological aging process somehow?

In darker moments I find myself imagining what it would be like to suddenly look a couple of hundred years old. Which would be great for Hallowe’en, but which would suck great big, hairy, sweaty donkey balls for the rest of the year.

And I still, to the dismay of everyone I have confided this fact to, haven’t got a will.

There was always a plan to get some kind of a museum up and running, and that, still, is something I want to do with the collection. I can’t see Logan having the patience or delicate touch required to deal with certain fragile documents (he’s already decimated what was an almost pristine set of OG Action Force and G.I. Joe figures, and he’s well on his way though what was my Super Powers collection), and Zoe already has notions of what she wants to do. It isn’t fair to saddle anyone with thousands upon thousands of old comics when I eventually kick the bucket.

I’m well aware, with each passing year, that the need to keep the collection intact means that a will ought to be one of my priorities. The thought of what happened to Denis Gifford’s collection is a prime motivating factor, and I have nowhere near the number of early comics he did. Most of the seventies through the nineties is complete except a few things here and there, although a few of the spin-off items (Marvel’s puzzle books especially) have been remarkably elusive, and I would hate for all the work gathering things together to go to waste.

Which is why, when I’m so damn healthy, it makes sense to do everything I want to do. Computer games and films are easier to leverage into other opportunities than a museum (of any description), and if I can find a way to make enough money – alongside subbing a frankly disturbing number of short stories to as many markets as I can think of, across quite a few genres – then any stationary facility will have secured funding.

It is highly unlikely that I can keep up this level of output forever.

And no, there will be no topless photographs of me posted here.

Unless, that is, someone is willing to pay for them, in which case…