Falling Asleep Games

As a child, I suffered a bit from insomnia. I wasn't very good at sleeping. My little mind was always active, I was scared of the dark, I had a good imagination...whatever. For some reason or other, I just wasn't good at falling asleep.

These days, being an exhausted (and possibly exhausting) adult, I usually don't have any trouble sleeping anymore. But once in a while, there's a time when I just can't sleep. And being the clever and resourceful fellow I am, I began to think of ways I could put myself to sleep when sleep didn't arrive in a timely manner on its own. I began to think of these as my "Falling Asleep Games". In other words, games you can play by yourself to help make yourself fall asleep. Counting Sheep is probably the best known Falling Asleep Game, but as you'll see in the next few examples, I've taken the concept to the next level...

The Story Game
In his memoir, "On Writing" Stephen King (who suffers from insomnia - big surprise there) described what is probably one of the best and simplest Falling Asleep Games: the story game. This one is pretty obvious: you think of an idea for a story in your head, and then you start writing it, in your head. Flesh out as much of the plot as you can, lay it down, word for word, until you fall asleep. The next night, pick it up again where you left off the night before. I suppose the best thing about this game is, the worse you are at sleeping, the more "writing" you can get done. No wonder King is so prolific...

The Mental Arithmetic Game
In order for Falling Asleep Games to work, at least for me, they have to be mentally taxing, but not overly interesting. I think the best games are those that take quite a bit of mental energy, but aren't so stimulating as to keep your mind energized, and therefore, awake. The Mental Arithmetic Game is probably the best example of this. Again, the idea is pretty simple: You think of a math problem, and then try to solve it in your head. To add to the tedium, I use a sequential series of problems (i.e. a multiplication table). The highest multiplication table I have memorized (keep in mind, I'm not so great at math) is 12. So, I might start with a problem like 13x12 and try to solve it in my head. Then I'll try to do 13x13, and 13x14, and so on. I hate trying to do math in my head, so I find the process exhausting. And the mental exhaustion puts me to sleep.

The Disappearing Game
This is one of the more fun and more interesting Falling Asleep Games that I've thought of. For that reason, it might not be the best way of putting yourself to sleep, depending on how you play it. But the idea is this: You try to imagine what would happen if you suddenly disappeared one day. And you try to imagine it in as much detail as possible. Who would be the first person to notice? What things in your life would start to deteriorate after your disappearance? What would happen to all of your possessions, pets, home, etc? What would people say about your mysterious absence? Would they try to figure out where you went? How long would they keep looking? Remember, the idea is not to think about what happened to you (remember, you just vanished completely one day), but rather to think about the consequences of your disappearance in as much exhaustive detail as possible. Therein lies the mental exercise...and the part that will eventually put you to sleep. It's particularly tiring if you think about all of the mundane details associated with the vanishing (e.g. were you holding a pen when you vanished? Did it roll under the table? Will anyone find it and check it for fingerprints? And so on).

That's all for now, hopefully this post didn't put you to sleep. Wait, actually I hope it did.

Journaling

I've always loved journaling, and for the last few years, I've kept journals of my every day life that are fairly detailed. I like to think it's the kind of thing that all single people who live alone would enjoy doing. That's generally better than thinking of myself as an isolated weirdo.

These days, thanks to technology, people can write down all of the tedious minutiae of their everyday lives, and use it to bore complete strangers. That's called blogging.

My approach to journaling is slightly different. Slightly contrary, as is my nature. I keep journals the old-fashioned way: I write stuff down on paper. The process is rather slow, but it seems more "special." I can pull out the old papers years later, and they'll be lovingly worn and slightly dog eared. I can tell if I was trying to write quickly by how messy the writing is, or what kind of pen I favoured at the moment, or how bored I was feeling by what I doodled in the margins. The mood for the entire year gets determined by whatever colour of folder I choose to store the whole thing in. And unlike blogging, it's very difficult to actually write down every single thing that actually happens.

This creates an interesting dilemna. How do I decide what to write down? Generally speaking, events in most people's lives can be separated into two categories: good things and bad things. I'm not going to include "neutral" things, because those probably weren't worth writing down to begin with. Part of the reason I'm journaling to begin with is because I believe my memory - anyone's memory - is a delicate and notoriously unreliable thing. And sooner or later, parts of it are going to fail, like an old computer whose hard drive stops working one day. And once that begins to happen, the only record of my life is going to be whatever I chose to write down.

But here's the trick: since I choose what to write down, I've been in control of the overall mood of the journals. If I leave out the bad things that have happened to me, I can look back at my journals, reading nothing but good things, and think to myself, "Wow, my life has been FANtasTIC!" And depending on how much I remember, I might not even realize that I'm essentially lying to myself.

So...what do I do? Leaving out all of the bad things is wildly innacurate, and leaving in every bad thing is needlessly depressing.

I write down every imporant thing that happens, good or bad. I try to give good things a higher priority. I try not to dwell on negative things, especially if they just aren't going to be all that important in the years to come. That time I was waiting at the bus stop and the bus didn't stop when it should have? No, not important. That time the mail order store sent me the wrong colour of paint? No, not important. That time my best friend died? Well, yes - that's pretty important. Too important to leave out. That time I made the greatest ever omelet for breakfast? Well...that WAS pretty good...but not quite important enough to write down.

Keep your priorities straight, don't dwell on the negative, and yes, your life's record can also be a wonderfully distilled account of how FANtasTIC your life has been. And...for the most part, it might even be quite accurate. Mostly.

Oh, and speaking of boring complete strangers with everyday minutiae: there's a new website now for people who seemingly can't get enough of doing exactly that. The site is called www.twitter.com and it's best described as a kind of micro-blogging. It works like this: In a couple of lines, you write down what you're doing at any given time of the day, updating it as often as you choose.

So, let me give you an example of how this works:

Me: "I'm eating dinner."
People reading my micro-blog: "Wow, he's eating dinner now!"

For anyone whose Sarcasmometer is malfunctioning at the moment, www.twitter.com is probably not going to be making my list of, "best ever uses for the internet."