This here is a post about health issues. Read at your own risk. 😉
I have had insomnia for two nights in a row. For the last two years, outside of illnesses, this has been unusual for me. I evened out my sleep patterns when I went paleo, which solved the issue of waking up several times a night and having trouble falling back asleep.
But even after that, I would often stay up wayyy past any reasonable hour. Of course, that time was spent on the computer. For the most part, it had to be: I was doing classwork for grad school, trying to write my own work, and managing blogs. At some point in the night I’d reach a burnout point and just start surfing, though, and while I knew that going to bed was what I needed to do, my brain was too wired to do it.
My body was exhausted but my mind would not give up.
Then I installed f.lux on my system, mostly as a lark, as I had read somewhere that it helps fix disrupted sleep cycles by making the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day (warm at night and like sunlight during the day). I figured that was far too simple a solution to be a solution, and…I was totally wrong. I saw the difference within the first few days: by bed time, I was completely ready for sleep, mentally and physically. Getting up and going to bed was not a chore but a necessary thing. I’ve been a f.lux evangelist since.
But sometimes you forget the obvious things. For the last two nights I’ve had trouble going to bed, because I was just too wired. It’s a problem — in fact it made me late for work because I overslept through my alarms.
I realized this morning that it’s not a big mystery, though: both nights, I disabled f.lux for a couple of hours in order to get some work done. I did this about 8pm from 10pm both nights, and since my bed-time is 10pm, it’s pretty obvious where this went. I was in no way ready for sleep by 10pm, and ended up staying awake past midnight until I basically collapsed.
So tonight, I’m going to try to get work done early and let f.lux run its course. I need the sleep. 😛
