That’s what sleep is like for me. If I can’t sleep it’s ALWAYS because of stuff I’m obsessing or worried about. Lately I’ve been waking up at around 3:30am every morning; a half hour past the witching hour (12am-3am), when all creatures dark and scary, are supposed to be at their most powerful. Leave it to me to be late for something even in my sleep. See, I wouldn’t even make a good witch. I’m late to everything. It’s ironic that I LOVE clocks and own tons of watches yet I’m late everywhere I go. Go figure.

Back to sleep, so when I have a hard time sleeping I’ve tried lots of things but the only thing that works for me is to pretend that I’m staring at a blank wall. I close my eyes and “stare” at nothing (the wall). I try not to think about ANYTHING. I used to try to do the counting sheep thing but then I started worrying about accuracy and missing the count on how many sheep jumped over the fence. Then I started thinking about how many sheep I’d have to count before I could fall asleep, then I worried that there was a cliff nearby and would they fall off? And if so, being sheep, how many would follow the others over the cliff? Ok so are you getting a picture of how neurotic I am? So, now, with my eyes closed; I visualize a blank wall…my favorite is a plain ole’ gray concrete wall. I “stare” at it, try to see the details, and think of nothing else…I block out all thoughts until I get so bored I fall asleep. You might want to try it. If it doesn’t work…definitely don’t count sheep, they’re dumb. Heh.

I do follow a routine nearly every night… but usually the routine is me doing the same things, in the same order, to avoid going to bed!

I’m good at sleeping in cars, does that count?

When I was a kid-up until college, really-I had a lot of trouble falling asleep. I still wanted a good long amount of sleep, but my body wanted me to wait until it was like 3am before it would let me get there. Getting up in the morning for school was Not Pretty. The craziness (read: alkeehol) of college, or a growth spurt or something changed me and I was suddenly able to fall asleep easily, for naps even.

I do think having a routine helps. I go to bed around the same time every night and wake up roughly the same time every morning regardless of my alarm going off or not. There are exceptions of course, but generally that’s my plan. I also only drink 1 cup of caff tea a day, in the morning, so theoretically the lack of caffeine the rest of the day could help, too.

I thought about a Ph.D. a while ago - because I thought it would be fun, but then I realized they would probably want me to work real hard, and they would probably expect me to become an academic - and I’m not sure I’m cut out for either of those.

You, on the other hand, would be a much better candidate.