Where is it? That wonderful, healing, evasive, pervading, and even sometimes playful state of consciousness\u2014called sleep. Sometimes it is teasing and pretends to be just on the horizon before flippantly removing itself behind thoughts and daydreams and refusing to be found. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The root of the type of sleeplessness that consumes me now is that energy-sapping overthinking that comes with preparing for travel. From the macro of planning (hotels booked, flight schedule confirmed, transfers arranged, bags not packed but the contents arranged and rearranged and rearranged again in my head)\u2014to the micro (plants steeped in water, fridge emptied of potentially rot-able material, neighbours notified of my forthcoming absence, floors vacuumed and bed sheets ready for changing). Should some catastrophic event befall me and prevent my return, heaven forbid that my home doesn\u2019t look presentable when strangers come in to clear the detritus of my life\u2014I will want them to know that I was a clean and orderly person once upon a time. Yes, overthinking indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And still no sleep. Sleep seems to have its own agenda\u2014yes, I will; no I won\u2019t; not now; not for the<\/em> foreseeable future and certainly not just when you<\/u> want it<\/em>\u2014but it also uses its ruses to prepare us for times in our lives when we simply cannot just close our eyes in happy oblivion and give ourselves over to peaceful dreaming. Many of us preparing for the birth of an offspring have spent sleepless nights beforehand in anticipation of spending our night hours listening, stirring, waiting to feed or to respond to an infant\u2019s demanding cry. And all too often in life we lie awake planning for the next day\u2019s activities\u2014rewriting that important speech in our heads or mentally laying out the structure of a day (which never seems to totally correspond to the day that eventuates). And so often we spend useless hours trying to take ourselves to that other place where counting sheep successfully eases us into that elusive land of slumber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have travelled so often now on long-haul flights and extensive train journeys\u2014and spent so many long hours in transit\u2014that I have come to think that the sleeplessness which sees me writing now in the early hours of the morning (sleeplessness that chuckles at the stupidity of my misuse of a dark, quiet night), has a purpose\u2014oneI recognise now and embrace. It is preparing me for the up-coming hours of sitting in the tortuous confines of an aircraft, overfed and under-imbibed, with excess fluid accumulating around my ankles and where sleep is but a notion, not a reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The good thing is though, that the sleeplessness of travel can be surprisingly therapeutic\u2014no more thoughts of preparations or potential disasters, and much like a new parent with her baby in the cot, I can give myself over to the moment (the hours) with the thought that there is nothing else I can do here\u2014it is what it is. And if I haven\u2019t packed to the best of instructions on the many travel sites that litter my laptop, it really won\u2019t matter\u2014I will be able to improvise for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But all that is still a few days away and I need to deal with my present wakefulness in the only way I know how\u2014clear my head by writing about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mission accomplished. Hello, sleep; where have you been?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Where is it? That wonderful, healing, evasive, pervading, and even sometimes playful state of consciousness\u2014called sleep. Sometimes it is teasing and pretends to be just on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":3461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[327,329,8,328,11,10],"class_list":["post-3453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mountain-life","category-stories","tag-barbara-mccarthy","tag-insomnia","tag-mountain-ash-chapter","tag-sleep","tag-story","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sff1uY-sleep","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2661,"url":"https:\/\/mountainashchapter.com.au\/?p=2661","url_meta":{"origin":3453,"position":0},"title":"Wombat’s Near Death Experience","author":"Tracey Conway","date":"October 8, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Wombat was close to losing consciousness. 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It's a great time to whip out your calendar, dust off your editing skills and throw your hat in the ring for some competitions. 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She says she likes to write about things that make her rage. Kylie's new book, The Eleventh Floor, is about a struggling sleep deprived mum who takes a night off from her sleepless baby. 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