Sleepeasy

I used to take me a very long time to fall asleep. I would often lie in bed for an hour or more with my eyes closed before I finally fell asleep. Now, I'm out within a few minutes.

This seems like a great thing but it's kind of annoying. That lie-in-bed-try-to-sleep time used to be the only time of the day when I could just think. Most of the time when I'm awake I'm reading something, walking somewhere, listening to something, or doing some kind of work. The pre-sleep in-bed time was my only chance to think about things. I usually used that time to think about stories or stuff I wanted to write. I came up with the whole ending to my novel while trying to fall asleep.

That time became so creatively productive I had to start budgeting it. I'd decide before hopping into bed which of the nine hundred thousand stories I've been brewing I would think about. It was like supercomputer processing time and I had to schedule some time for every project.

Now, though, I don't have the benefit. When I put away whatever I'm reading or watching and go all close-eyed I have maybe 5 or 10 minutes to think about the mechanics of a particular superhero's tactical equipment before I start shifting through brainwave cycles and before I know it, it's tomorrow.

I'm not entirely sure why this is. The only major life change I've made in the past year has been everything. It seems like as soon as I moved out of my parents' house and to Chicago, the sleeplessness has stopped. This isn't really a narrowed-down cause, however. It could be that I was extremely depressed for the last year because I had no job or money, or because I could feel my dreams of living in Chicago slipping away which also made me extremely depressed (depression causes restlessness). Or it could just be that the air conditioning in that house was poorly designed, causing it to often be way too hot in my room. It's hard to fall asleep when I'm too warm. Now that I've got my own place and the air conditioning unit is mere inches from my bed, I can keep it exactly as cold as I want it to be (very).

Or perhaps it's just that I have a job now, and I actually do real things during the day, so I'm more mentally worn out at night. Or perhaps because I went from walking zero miles per day to an average of 5. Or maybe, just maybe, goblins.