Rubénerd Blog :)

Over the last few years I’ve been having bad sleeping problems, mostly related to worrying I think. This evening though I’m feeling just fine. Thought you’d all like to know :)

Sometimes a short train trip late at night through the Marias Pass train route in northern Montana with the 2001 era DirectX graphics and sky is just what I need to relax just before going to sleep.

I first got Train Simulator in 2002, it was the first game I tried on my desktop at the time, the first game I tried running with Boot Camp with my then-new MacBook Pro in early 2006 (Windows gaming on a MacBook Pro), and is still one of the reasons I keep a copy of Windows XP lying around for the 3D acceleration in software like VMware Fusion.

For someone who moved around so much as a kid and could never have huge trainsets, this was the closest I ever got, and I still find it fun :).

Given the success I’ve had with sketching out ideas and concepts using diagrams, I thought I’d make one to think about sleeping problems. I think it just made the whole issue more confusing!

There seems to be a certain class of people who derive their primary source of life value by mocking Twitter because it’s not good enough for them to simply not use it. Fair enough, if it helps them to get high, it’s probably healthier they do that than using drugs!

Last night I couldn’t sleep because I had so many conflicting worrying thoughts in my head. As longer time readers here would know I’ve never been that good at sleeping, but these last few weeks have been particularly hard. You probably know the drill yourself, your head hits the pillow and for the next two hours you’re shifting around trying to get comfortable while all these negative thoughts and scenarios play out in your head. Personally I find myself dwelling on the past as much as the future, I’m constantly going through the "what if’s".

As I said on Twitter though, sometimes it helps to put things into perspective. As I sat in bed worrying about studies, work, family and time there were people around the world who didn’t even have a place to sleep. I’m typing this on a computer which most people around the world couldn’t dream of affording. When I woke up in the morning I could go to the fridge to get something to eat then have a hot shower, two more things much of the people in the world don’t have access to.

I guess it’s harder to make rational sense at 2am when you have assignments due, work that’s behind schedule, an unpaid bill you’re disputing and getting angry calls about, and social anxiety problems. Cliche developed world problems I’m sure many around the world would more than happily exchange me for.

It’s all about our frame of reference. In my case I suppose I just have to work at making the frame bigger and to stop dwelling on problems when I’m alone with my thoughts when I’m trying to sleep. Makes rational, logical sense but alas seems to be easier said than done.

As a blogger there are many cool things Google Reader can display for you regarding your site’s feed, one of which is a graph displaying the times of day posts are most often generated, such as my site above. The light blue bars represent items posted.

While I’ve known for a while I tend to prefer writing in the evenings (usually with a hot cup of tea to relax), I was surprised by the extent to which the numbers were skewed to the early evening, and again much later. According to the graph, my most productive blogging hours on average are 23:00 and 01:00! I knew I tended to write later, but… damn!

Now it’s true that during the day I’ve got studying and work going on, plus other life distractions like getting rude phone calls from people in my high school expecting technical support for free even though they haven’t spoken to me in months. With this in mind it’s understandable I’d write later in the evening when the day is starting to wind down and there’s less stuff going on. But… 01:00?

Then I started thinking that I tend to have the most thoughts, am the most mentally alert and (in a cruelly ironic way) by far the most awake in the late evening, and given the sleeping patterns of many of my uni friends this isn’t an unusual situation! Since I started my new treatment these symptoms have been substantially reduced and I’ve been more easily able to sleep during regular hours, but I still find a disproportionate number of ideas and solutions to problems come to me really late at night.

I wonder if other programmers, or scientists, or musicians, or artists, or jaffle makers come up with some of their best creations late at night? I know both my parents certainly didn’t in science and art respectively, at least to the best of my knowledge.

When I’m alone at night
Watching those re-runs of Dragnet
Catching those rays of electro-light
Love pulls at me like a magnet
When I’m alone at night

~~ Verse from "Alone at Night" by Michael Franks, my favourite singer/songwriter since I was a kid.

A few years ago when I was obsessed with lucid dreaming I kept a dream diary on my PDA next to my bed, nowadays I have a notes page on my iPhone dedicated to random sporadic thoughts I have during the night. If I created a blog post for each one, I could fill up a phone book. I exaggerate, but you get my point. I don’t know what I would ever do with this stuff, but it seems a shame to let it go to waste, even if all I write down is "Athenian LCD columns" or "baking colour". What the heck do those mean?!

My dad has been learning about Buddhism for several years now and one technique they teach you is controlling the thoughts in your mind to achieve a state of mindfulness. They say the mind is constantly thinking about things not related to the task at hand, some of which can be useful for longer term problem solving, but it can also impede on your ability to finish a task. One such task is sleep: to sleep better they say you should attempt to bring long trains of thought under control and move them from your mind. Easier said than done I imagine!

Anyway it’s getting close to 01:00 and I have a ton of stuff in the morning, perhaps it’s time for sleep. Why even this blog post itself was merely a rambling brain dump… perhaps the reason why I tend to blog at such late hours of the night is because my brain is trying to rid itself of nonsense before I sleep! Hey, I could be onto something here.

Night night.

I feel as though I could start a blog dedicated to the science of sleep — I sure talk about it enough here. Perhaps this topic is worthy of a new category even?

This morning I’m having the exact opposite problem to what I normally have: I’m too awake. Last night I went to sleep around 20:00 which is extraordinary early for me, but it unfortunately had the same result it always has: it made me bolt out of bed around 03:00 ready to start a new day! It’s 03:40 already and I’ve had a shower, a bite to eat and tacked a small programming problem that’s been gnawing at me for the last few days, and I’m still wide awake.

The ironic thing is, for most of my life I’m tired. Virtually any time of day, if you give me a comfortable pillow to rest my head on, I will doze off. The only time of the day I have trouble sleeping is… late at night. It’s as if I’m a nocturnal creature by nature and trying to force a sleeping pattern that’s the opposite to that is unnatural and doesn’t work. Some people my age are nocturnal because with all the booze filled partying late at night they’ve conditioned themselves for it, but for me it seemed to happen organically with all my regular day-to-day tasks.

I’d say other than deciding what to do when I finish university and whether I’ll finish all my studies in Adelaide after all, figuring out how to sleep properly is currently the biggest problem I’m facing. Nobody should feel tired 100% of the time during the day and only a low percentage at night… at least I don’t think they should.

I’m going to figure out how to sleep one of these nights if I have to stay awake all night to do it! I’m not Bill Kurtis.

Garfield has the right idea… again…

Another night, another case of insomnia. In this case it’s 03:00 and I’m still not only wide awake, but clearly possessing the energy needed in order to not only climb out of bed, but to sit myself in front of a computer, take that inital blast of blazing light as I turn the monitor on, and start typing a blog post.

It’s funny that more often than not for me I don’t have trouble sleeping when I have a huge problem or obstacle to overcome in life, but rather when I have hundreds of smaller problems. They seem to build up exponentially at times to the point where I can be propped up in bed and my thoughts are running together faster than a relay team. Sorry for the crappy comparison, but you try to be witty at 03:04.

Why has my bank said the rent has been paid but my landlord says it hasn’t? Why hasn’t that package from Japan arrived yet? Do I want to live permanently here or back in Australia? Would super capacitors run hotter and therefore need more cooling than a traditional battery? Why am I always so nervous? How could there be plants at the centre of the earth according to the "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" movie if there’s no sunlight? Where are my keys? Should I give up on this long hair experiment and have it all cut off when it’s taken over 4 years to get this far? Is OpenBSD really that much slower than FreeBSD and NetBSD in real life even if benchmarks say that is in certain circumstances? Why do I still expect to see mummy at some point?

Is that it? I hope so. Why do I want to learn German, Dutch, Swedish and Japanese of all things? German makes sense, my dad and half my family are, and Dutch might be somewhat similar to German, but why Swedish and Japanese? Why does mess accumulate so fast? If the bed frame I’m sleeping on broke at an angle, would I slide off the bed, crash through the window behind me and fall 7 floors? Does my medical insurance cover falling out of my bed… from 7 floors up? Why do I worry about worrying as much as I worry about the problems themselves? Who decided that toothpaste should be minty in flavour and that mints are fresh? Why do I worry about not having too much of a social life if I prefer that lifestyle? Why is concentrating on your breathing in order to drown out distractions so simple in principal but so hard to actually do?

Can you order home delivered sleep? You know what, that generated too many negative images, had I been more awake I would have been alert to that before I had typed it. I would have also realised that I could have just as easily used the backspace key and deleted that line instead of trying to explain why normally I wouldn’t have written such stuff here.

Not sure if this is helping me sleep or not. Perhaps I should dust off an old copy of Learning Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 and read it. Ah no, alas with me boredom doesn’t make me tired, it just makes me feel bored. Perhaps a silly anime series? Nah, I don’t have the energy to laugh, and I’d have to read subtitles. Quick walk around the block? Nah, I’m too tired. Aha, problem solved.

I will get the hang of this sleeping business eventually, I might lose some sleep over trying to figure it out though.

Garfield has the right idea…

I hate to write a post that merely references the comments submitted on an earlier post, but in this case I really think I need to, if only because detailed comments just don’t get as much exposure on a blog, and that people who read my blog through an RSS aggregator such as Google Reader or NetNewsWire wouldn’t have seen it.

Randy Fullerton (aka Atuuschaaw on Whole Wheat Radio) from Mitakuye Oyasin has posted an incredibly salient comment on my latest post where I discussed my sleeping troubles (Google Reader at 3am: sleep related stories).

I’ve heard some people speak of pharmaceuticals as nothing more than controls of conformity. For jet-lagged business people whose biological clocks never have time to self-adjust due to the hours spent in flight…give ‘em some drugs to reset the clock. For those shift workers, those who work swing shifts, or at least a graveyard shift…give them some drugs as well. We must produce! When we alter our natural clock and turn off or confuse our more primal self…what else do we alter? I’m thinking loading the iPhone with some good music, mixed with a walk would be much more beneficial. ;-)

Going with the flow of the natural clock can be very rewarding…but only if one finds this option available to them. I know about conforming and making concessions to survive…now I find myself with the opportunity to tear down some of those fences built from a lifetime of social models of conformity. It feels really good to follow the natural patterns…it’s just these patterns are not always easy to recognize or understand! I think that is because our hard drive has been formatted for a particular OS, and once we go open source we are bewildered at first, and there is a learning curve. But the good part is, it gets easier as time goes on!

Movie quote: (”When I got tired, I slept. When I got hungry, I ate. When I had to go, you know, I went.”) ;-)

It’s always slightly intimidating to reply to Randy because you know you just can’t beat his literary flair or style, but I tried my best :). If you have something to add, feel free to join the conversation!

Garfield has the right idea…

After several weeks of blissfully normal sleep patterns, I’ve fallen back into a serious rut when it comes to being able to sleep properly, if at all. It seems that for at least one week every month I have to have sleep troubles, as if it’s part of some devious lunar plot. During this designated week, even though I get up at roughly the regular time, I lie in bed wide awake as I watch the clock tick past 01:00, then 02:00, then 03:00, then 04:00…

Both my parents and my grandmother on my mum’s side have admitted to having serious sleeping problems, but as convenient an excuse it would be for me, I just can’t see genetics as playing a part in this. I definitely need to start doing some inward focused analysis… if that makes any sense.

It’s hard to make sense at 3am when you can’t sleep so instead of talking myself, I thought I’d use the power of Google Reader to look into the subject of sleep. Isn’t science wonderful?

The first article is from Reuters (Insomnia drug helps jet-lag, shift-work troubles) which coincidently Jerry Novak on Twitter forwarded to me after seeing my early morning tweets yesterday. It discusses a new treatment possibly being developed for people suffering from sleep trouble. I resolved never to take any sleeping pills simply because I don’t want to develop a nasty dependence, but I might be keeping an eye on this:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An insomnia drug that helps the body produce more of the sleep hormone melatonin may improve sleep for jet-lagged travelers and shift workers, researchers reported on Monday.

Maryland-based Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. reported on two studies of its drug tasimelteon, also known as VEC-162, that showed it helped patients sleep longer and more deeply than a placebo.

They said that people with so-called circadian rhythm disorders could be helped. These disorders are common causes of insomnia that affect millions of people [...]

Another recently published article about an unrelated study from the Australian ABC (New sleep drug brings hope for shift workers) also shows some promising new developments happening here in Australia:

A study into sleep disorders shows a new drug can help people affected by jet lag or shift work.

The Monash University research says the drug tasimelteon can shift the rhythm of melatonin levels in the body.

Melatonin is a marker of the internal biological clock and helps regulate circadian rhythms.

Sleep disorder expert Dr Shantha Rajaratnam says the drug could help patients fall asleep even when they are out of their normal time zone.

And finally we fly to Britain for this unconventional BBC Health report (Pop tunes used to calm babies) on how toddlers are being helped to sleep not with lullabies, but with pop songs!

Rocking a baby to sleep has been given a whole new meaning as some mothers ditch traditional lullabies for popular pop and rock tunes.

Songs such as Robbie Williams’ Angels and Oasis anthem Wonderwall proved popular in the poll of 2,000 mothers.

The survey found nearly two-thirds thought pop ballads could be better for getting babies to sleep than lullabies like Rock-a-Bye Baby.

According to the BBC, the top five most commonly sung songs for kids are Patience by Take That; Angels by Robbie Williams; I Kissed a Girl by Kate Perry; You’re Beautiful by James Blunt and Love Me Tender by Elvis Presley. I can definitely see exactly how all these songs would be calming.

And funnily enough, Angels is one of my favourite Robbie Williams songs; it’s got some gorgeous lyrics. Perhaps I need to load up the old iPhone, park it next to the bed and do some musical loops. After I regulate my melatonin and shell out a fortune for some experimental American sleeping drugs of course. Then again, perhaps a glass of cold water and a pleasant stroll around the block and back will suffice.

Do you reckon I’ll ever find an angel? Oh dear, perhaps it’s time I tried sleeping again. G’night everyone.

I’ve been having real problems these last few weeks sleeping for some reason. A combination of really bad insomnia, emotion over a certain recent event and other whatnot have really started taking their toll, I’ve been feeling really physically and mentally tired all day, every day. When you sit in your computer chair working and studying in the early afternoon, late at night, early in the morning or any other time of the day, and the number one fantasy going through your head at all times is how nice it would be to climb into a comfy bed and go to sleep, you know there’s something wrong!

I haven’t been drinking any more coffee that I usually do, and certainly none in the late afternoon or evening. Even my sister seems to have been having trouble as of late herself for similar reasons.

I think I need a change of scenery. Perhaps I’ll change my desktop environment on one of my other machines from KDE to GNOME, just to shake things up (I liked my week long GNOME trial more than I thought I would, though I think I’ll keep KDE on my primary FreeBSD machine for now). I’ll uninstall Mono though once it attaches itself.

Perhaps I’ll try doing some morning hikes around Sungei Buloh instead of the usual Bukit Timah park as well. I’m a wild guy!