Sleep Experiment One: Trickery

Like many alive today, I tend to have sleep issues. Unfortunately, these issues are entirely voluntary. I am horrifically attracted to the allure of late night internet diving and gaming. If I spend my free time in the dark hours of the morning, no one's awake to call in favors or ask me to run any errands for them. It really is the perfect time to have absolutely nothing to do... my favorite thing to do...

But! Our world has yet to follow my superior views... thus I am forced to wake up early each morning. For every hour I decide to live it up, giving myself a reason to force myself through the drab days, I get knocked down another peg on the "Sleep or Die" table.

After years of this, I finally became sickened at the idea of waking up each day feeling more like a piece of zombie toast than a self-respecting human being. I decided changes must be made!

So, I decided to sit down and make a compromise with myself... no matter how long it would take. And, six minutes later, I came up with a plan... a plan I thought had no chance to fail. I couldn't decide on going to sleep early and missing out on the magical time of each day when responsibility sleeps. No, no! I had a "better" plan! I was going to trick myself into thinking I was getting more sleep! How could it fail? (Hint: See Below/Use Common Sense). My "Nobel Prize Winning" idea included staying up as late as I wanted and then following a few easy steps.

1. Get completely comfortable in the bed.

2. Close eyes to block out all light.

3. Tell yourself you are getting way more sleep than you are actually getting.

Yes, I planned on tricking my unconscious self into thinking it was getting more sleep than it logically was. How was I going to do this? I almost hate you for asking...

After completing steps one and two, I would then lie perfectly still. In my mind, I would imagine myself inside an escape pod on a space ship. I imagined the pod was just barely large enough for me to roll over and get comfortable so that I could feel more "cozy" and "safe". Then, the pod would be launched into space, and that's where the real fun began. I would then imagine that I was going to end up floating in space for HUNDREDS OF YEARS until I could be rescued. Thus, I would cryogenically freeze myself so I could sleep for these hundreds (sometimes thousands if I was REALLY tired) of years.

That was it, that's all I would do. I basically just told myself a bedtime story before I went to sleep. Now... did it work?

No. No it did not...

I started doing this six years ago... and I still do it today. I'm waiting for some magical enchantment to bless my regimen and have it randomly start working. But, until that day, I will continue to live each day for the late nights and pay my price in the morning... lurching around like I would rather every living thing be dead.