I had a medium sized mocha thingy back at 7pm yesterday. The euphoria was nice for the first few hours. But I thought the effects would wear off.

Or this is just the periodic insomnia that's become increasingly present.

I haven't had a full night's sleep in nearly a month. I wake up around dawn, or 8am, or 9am. Or if I don't wake up myself there's something that does it.

I don't think it's affected my mental performance or job performance, but this constant inability to get what seems like an adequate amount of sleep is troubling.

I literally try to outthink myself so that I can relax. But in trying to motivate yourself to not think about 50 million different things, you're perpetuating the same process.

I've usually been able to get at least some kidney repair time (2-3 hours). Tonight I'm not sure. I tried all of the usual techniques I use to relax or feel more tired...but something keeps holding me back.

Could be semi-conscious lab stuff. Or the constant hypervigilance because just when I relaxWHAM, there's some new crisis to take care of. It's not related to personal stuff or occasional personal conflicts. A thought of a very dear friend of mine helped me to nearly go to sleep. Rather, it's this...hyper alertness, like I've thrown on a ceiling fan switch and I can't stop my mind from spinning around.

So much micro-management grad student horseshit. Sometimes I come to an epiphany like, "Oh..there's a meeting a student re-scheduled which I thought was at this time, but it's at this time"...and suddenly I'm fine again.

So maybe I'm just forgetting something. But I have no idea what it is.

I do have one clear idea about insomnia, however. It sucks. And it looks like I can't have caffeinated anything during the evening anymore. Otherwise it just carries over. I never used to be this sensitive to caffeine. Maybe it's the weight loss or (as completely unbelievable as it might be) being less stressed out in general.

I'm going to try just laying in bed for awhile. I don't know what else to do.

Well, I decided on a warm shower and trying to visualize worry just washing away. That and telling myself that some sudden crisis or threat to my professional well-being wouldn't come up in the next 4 hours (and I accidentally wrote and saved that as 'would' originally. That's just how my lab makes me feel to varying degrees).

I'll see what happens over spring break.

(about 3 hours later)

The shower and some focused mental imagery did the trick. I feel about as alert, but there's some lactic acid build-up I need to take care of. Gut feels odd. But as usual, despite the small amount of sleep, I feel relatively fine. Ah well, I ain't knocking it.

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