Day 80: The Sleep Goblin Returns

The sleep goblin made its appearance for the first time since I moved to this new place in Santa Cruz a week and a half ago.

Of course, this was bound to happen. I had thought yesterday morning about how great it is that I’ve been able to sleep so well despite being so deep in my work because there’s usually an inverse correlation between my work focus and my sleep quality where I wake up randomly and think about work things in the middle of the night. The past week, my work excitement made appearances as soon as I woke up in the morning, but not in the middle of the night.

This time though, the culprit might not have been the work excitement. I went to sleep at 12 AM with the plan to wake up at 7 AM to do yoga with Cathy, and I set an alarm, which I never do, because I wanted to make sure I woke up. I had completely forgotten about our last yoga session and didn’t want to miss this one, too. I suspect having that strong of a resolve to wake up early / having fear around sleeping through our session made me more on edge especially since I’ve been operating on the “I’ll wake up when I wake up” policy for many, many months now. It’s one of my favorite perks of working for myself (aka being unemployed? the line is still blurry). Since I don’t have meetings to attend to or obligations in the morning, I can fully prioritize my sleep.

Well, whatever the reason was, I woke up at 3 AM and found that I couldn’t fall back asleep. I always struggle with trying to decide whether to lay in bed and wait for the sleep goblin to leave or just get up and try to make the most of being awake. There’s a funny thing about the hypnagogic state of consciousness, where one is half-asleep and half-awake. My mind feels like it’s at its most creative when slightly untethered from reality, and I had ideas for things I want to write about magically appear in my mind. The act of getting up to grab my phone to write them down seemed to encourage my mind to generate more content because I ended up getting up several more times to jot down even more ideas. Finally, at 4:07 AM, I admitted defeat, went upstairs to make myself a bowl of cereal, thought about just how much sugar there was in everything, then came back down to work on Intention for a bit.

At 6:45 AM, I felt myself crashing and headed to my room to try to fall asleep. I texted Cathy telling her that I wouldn’t be able to join her, and she was super understanding and kind despite me being the worst yoga partner. Sorry, Cathy. 🥺 Sleep goblin, begone!