Tag insomnia

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I’m thinking about how much I wish I was still asleep.

I woke up at 4am again, and tossed and turned for an hour before trying first to write in my journal, and then deciding to go ahead and write this on my Web-log here (I hate that word, actually. I like the word “blog,” have been using that even though I’m sure it’s now passe, that it has been yeeted along with every other “world wide web” term by the new generation who talk more about wifi than internet; but I’ve always hated “weblog” because it looks like “we blog.” And we do, oh yes we do blog, precious; but that’s now how the word is said, it’s said “web log” because it’s a log kept on the web — but there’s no way to indicate that without adding a space or a capital letter or a hyphen, all of which ruin the visual indication that this is where the word “blog” comes from, a shortening of “web log.”) what thoughts are running around in my head and keeping me from going back to sleep.

This. This is what I think about when I wake up at 4am. Along with the thoughts, “God, I’m tired” and “I should really get more sleep” and “Today’s going to suck.” See why I said yesterday that my brain, like everyone else’s brain, is unwell and disordered and just — stupid? Because I really do need sleep, and my brain knows it, but yet somehow it can’t stop thinking “Man, I’m really tired. I should be sleeping now. I’m not though. This day’s going to be awful.”

I would like to apologize in advance to everyone today for my crankiness and slowness, for my confusion and my general inability to remember anything or to think clearly. I blame my idiot 4am brain.

No, the main thing that’s waking me up, and has been all week, is this: we need to move. We’re downsizing to save money, and our lease is up, and we need to find a new house. We want one that is cheap but decent, and that has a good yard with a solid fence for our dogs and our tortoise, who lives in the yard.

That right there is the first problem we’ve been having: most places don’t have a fenced yard, or don’t allow dogs, or don’t allow TWO dogs, or don’t allow anything but small dogs. And if you’re not a dog person, okay, fine, sure, you don’t want hair in the place and you don’t want poop in the yard and you’re scared that they’ll bark or dig. But if you’re willing to allow me to have a dog, what is the problem with me having two dogs? You think two dogs will bark more than one? Are you afraid they’ll fight? Is there some calculation in your head that says the place is too small for that much canine mass? I mean– can’t you let me handle those problems? If you don’t want dogs, fine; but if you allow dogs, what’s with the weight limit? If it’s an apartment without a yard, again, that’s fine, I understand; I wouldn’t move my dogs into a place that didn’t have a yard for them, but lots of people do that, and I think it’s wrong, too; but with tiny lap-dogs it’s much more manageable, so in that case, you can say that you don’t mind tiny yappy puppers. But if you have a yard, why couldn’t I have as many large dogs in there as I can cram in? Why does the landlord care how many dogs I have? Is there a fear that too much will create a canine supernova, which will then collapse into a doggo-black hole?

At any rate, once we find a place, we’re going to have to downsize and get rid of stuff, and we’re going to have to move.

And that’s it. That’s the thought. That’s what keeps me up at night, why I can’t sleep, why I am currently seeing double because my eyes won’t focus well, and having trouble typing because my fingers are not hitting the right keys in the right sequence. Because I’m going to have to get rid of stuff, and then move the remaining stuff from one house to another, and put it all away.

I don’t know why I’m having trouble with this. Sure, there is anxiety about the house hunting: will we find a place that we like? Will we still like it once we move into it with all of our possessions and our pets? What about our neighbors, will they drive us crazy? Will we hate living there after six or eight months? All of that is one thing; but this morning I was thinking about stuff. I was trying to picture how we could cram our current possessions into the condo we looked at yesterday — which was a dump, by the way, as per our expectations; it was in a good neighborhood and it was dirt cheap, but that was because of all the dirt.

Now: why? Why was I trying to make decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of? Why was I worrying that we wouldn’t have room in the garbage can for the junk I’ll want to throw away, junk that has accumulated in our back yard simply because we have room for it, and I haven’t bothered getting rid of it before now? Garbage? 4am, I’m exhausted, and I’m literally worrying about garbage.

Garbage.

I think I need to clear my brain out, too.

That also, I have to say, represents most of the stuff that we’ll need to downsize and get rid of: things we just haven’t bothered to remove because we had room for it. The house we’re in now is quite large, four bedrooms for the two of us and our pets; the bird has his own bedroom. So we have the chair that isn’t as comfortable as it used to be, but we kept because our Boxer mix likes curling up in it. We have a bookshelf full of CDs that only I listen to any more, and that rarely because most of them are either uninteresting to me, or are already ripped onto our iTunes. If I just consolidated my tools, and cleaned out the half-empty plastic bags of hardware that has been left over after assemblies and repairs and installations over the last few years, I’d be able to put all of my home-repair stuff into one medium box.

I just haven’t done it. Because we’ve had room to store everything, so why worry about it?

And now, it seems, it’s time to worry about it. Except there’s nothing to worry about. Not even the move itself: it’s now May, and school will end in three weeks (And THANK GOD FOR THAT), and then we’ll have nothing to do but move; while we’ll need one day with a U-Haul truck and friends to help us move the big furniture, the rest we can do in small trips with our car. We’ve done this many times before, and it’s never been hard, and it won’t be hard now. It’ll be good for us, in fact, because we really should get rid of all of our clutter; it’s not sparking any joy for us.

Now someone, please, I beg of you: explain that to my 4am brain. Because the one thing that will make this move hard is if I can’t get enough sleep.

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I’m thinking about mental health.

We talk so much about mental illness. And I find myself wondering — Is there even such a thing as mental wellness? Are any of us right in the head? Just asking that question, even beyond the fact that it implies that people with mental illness are “wrong” in the head, it seems impossible. It seems impossible to me that anyone’s mind could — just… work. 

I mean, don’t we all have invasive thoughts? Self-destructive urges? Moods that overtake everything else? Don’t we all, every one of us, sometimes think just stupid, ridiculous things?

I talk to people fighting depression and anxiety, and obsessive and compulsive traits and habits and thoughts, and I always think and I sometimes say, “You shouldn’t think that way.” (I would probably use different words.) Like if someone says that a possible failure, say if they didn’t get a job they wanted, would be a signal of doom, of complete worthlesssness; I would say, “Don’t think like that, it’s not true, don’t listen to the part of your mind that says so: that’s the depression/anxiety speaking, and it’s lying to you.” And I’d mean it, and I’d be right.

And then I’ll get a rejection letter from a literary agent, and I’ll say to myself, “Welp, that’s it, my writing career is doomed now, I am competely worthless. RIP me.”

I don’t suffer from depression or anxiety, or any other form of mental illness, so far as I know; that’s a difficult statement to be sure of, because there are so many forms of mental illness or disorder (Just that word, disorder. Hell yes my mind is disordered. Does anyone actually have mental order? For real?) and they are so hard to define and diagnose; I know there are specific criteria that move such issues into a specific category such as something that requires therapy or treatment of some kind, and I’m not trying to argue against that; but if someone comes in below that threshold, it doesn’t mean they’re not suffering. If someone’s depression is not persistent  enough or severe enough to warrant medication, that doesn’t mean it’s not depression, and that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt or doesn’t handicap that person’s life in some way. I certainly do go through bouts of anxiety, and depression; I have pretty severe insomnia, and some pretty unhealthy behaviors and obsessions. My brain doesn’t “work right” quite a lot of the time.

Does anyone’s?

An even simpler example: somehow my mind decides to accept things that I know are patently untrue. Like I look in the mirror, and think, “Wow, too bad I’m balding; my hair was my only good feature, and now I’m going to be ugly  forever.” And then I will tell myself — and it’s not really like there’s part of my brain that doesn’t know this and part of my brain that does, IT’S THE SAME BRAIN — “That’s absurd, you look fine. You look good. Your wife, the only opinion that matters, tells you all the time that you are handsome, that she loves your eyes, your smile, the shape of your face — your eyebrows, for Christ’s  sake, she loves your eyebrows!” And then I’ll think, “Yup, too bad about being ugly forever without more hair.” Or weight: I can think I look fat, see someone who is TWO TO THREE TIMES MY SIZE and recognize them as far bigger and more obese than me; see someone who is thin and think they are too skinny, and then still think: I’m fat.

The thoughts don’t make sense. And if I recognize they don’t make sense, why do I still have them? How can I argue with myself, win, and yet still have lost because the problem doesn’t go away? Why doesn’t my own brain listen to logic? Or even simple commands?

My brain at 4am: So those essays. Have to grade those.

Smart brain part: Don’t think about it now, you’ll do them later. Now you should sleep, so you’ll have more energy to do the essays quickly and easily and well.

4am brain: Right, gotta grade those essays. There are twenty of them. Essays.

SBP: Stop thinking about it. Go to sleep.

4am: See, there are these essays, and they need grades. I have to do that.

 

What kind of properly functioning mechanism does that?

I’m very healthy, in general. I don’t have allergies, I don’t have any chronic disorders, I am basically fit (FAT I’M FAT) and things work the way they’re supposed to. I’m 44 and I’ve always been like that; I’m very lucky, but also, this is the way it’s supposed to be, right? Like my parents aren’t eugenic miracles, they don’t have perfect health themselves, it’s not like we’re superhuman; I just — work. Correctly. I know there are lots of people like me whose bodies  work.

So why the hell can’t my brain do that, too?

I guess my point with all of this is that there is a different standard we should be using for our minds, for our mental state. I suspect that no one’s, no one’s, is perfect, is “right,” is “healthy.” I suspect we all have good days and bad, and the proportions change as our circumstances change.

And also, that’s a stupid goddamn thing. Our brains are stupid. I wish they worked the way they’re supposed to.

I hate thinking that this is the way they’re supposed to.

But it probably is.

Dammit.

Again? Really?

Dusty Leave a comment

So I had insomnia last night, again. I woke up about 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep: I was too busy fretting about my teaching. (It didn’t help that I had an annoying earworm, the chorus of Five Finger Death Punch’s “Jekyll and Hyde,” repeating in my mind the whole time. But the main thing was the fretting.) Am I teaching fast enough? Am I teaching right enough? Am I teaching hard enough?

It is a constant worry. Not just for me, I’m sure, but for most teachers. It’s why the Standards movement has gained so much ground among teachers, even though logically, standards have very little to offer teachers other than more work and less individual freedom. Because teaching is a profession with an enormous amount of uncertainty. The goals are uncertain – am I teaching my students reading and writing? Critical thinking? Good citizenship? Obedience and conformity? – and the measurements are uncertain – do I want them to get high grades, or high standardized test scores? Or do I want them to feel self-confident and happy? – and the future of one’s employment is the most uncertain of all: because not only does it rest on the vagaries of school population and school funding, but it also rests on those same uncertain, everchanging goals and measurements. Teaching is like walking through a fog bank on the edge of a cliff and trying to shoot a bullseye with a bow and arrow. And I don’t mean a target: I mean the actual eye of an actual bull, that is moving somewhere through the fog, and may be trying to knock you off the cliff – especially if you shoot him with the arrow.

But here’s the thing: everything about teaching is uncertain, except for this: teachers are important, and good teachers are doubly so; and I think, after sixteen years, it is certain that I am a good teacher. I think I can know that, even if I don’t know anything else for sure. I have always been able to work well with my students, and even when the curriculum has been drastically changed, I have generally been able to adapt to the new stuff and still get good results. I am slow, both in covering material and in keeping up with paperwork; and I am a bit of a maverick, in that I tend to push for my own choices of material and my own goals rather than the ones preferred by my administrators; but our goals are generally pretty congruent, because I always have the students’ best interests in mind. It’s one of the things that makes me a good teacher. And I have had former students, and their parents, come back to me and tell me that my class was their best class, that it was one of the things they looked forward to in their school day; they have said that they learned a lot from me; they have said that I changed the way they thought, or they read, or they wrote. Bull’s eye.

Unfortunately, my confidence in myself doesn’t actually translate to a lack of worry. Partly because I am a worrier by nature, and partly because I am surrounded by a whole world of people telling me to do something differently. “You’re teaching THAT?! Don’t teach that – teach this!” “You’re teaching that THAT way?!? Don’t teach that way – teach this way. And also this way. And kind of this way, too. And make sure you have clear lesson, unit, and semester plans, all prepared in advance and shared to a Google document with everyone else who wants to read them and laugh behind their hands at you.” “Make sure they get high test scores. But not on that test – that’s the old test. Use this test. And also, keep the parents happy – which means make sure they get high grades, since that’s what pleases parents.””Oh – and check for dress code violations, and make sure they aren’t fooling around in the supply closet.” I tell myself all the time that all I need to do is my best; but it never feels like enough. At least I think that. Particularly when I wake up at 3am. It all makes it very difficult: to teach, and also to sleep.

But finally, I got back to sleep. And I had a dream. In the dream, I was making my wife drive me to school early so that I could donate a pile of art books that we didn’t want any more, that I thought my students might enjoy or be able to use. And when I got there (In standard dream fashion, it was raining Biblically, and the school was something like an old haunted Victorian, and I actually had a suite of my own – and needed to take a shower before class started – and the principal I talked to was the one from Oregon before I moved here in 2014), before I went inside, a sleepy student – it was still dark, before sunrise, plus the rain – asked if she could lie down in the back of the car, and because she was obviously tired and cold, I let her, over my wife’s irritated objections. I went inside with my art book donation, and there found that I had a new assignment: now all of my classes were going to be taught outside. (Apparently in the middle of a deluge. Hey, why not? They can learn about water conservation and climate change. And hypothermia.) Starting that morning. I objected to this, even threatening to quit, but my administrator asked me to slow down, in the middle of my outraged temper tantrum, and explain why I wasn’t willing to make this change; and in thinking about it, I realized that I was teaching things that all related pretty well to being outside – Thoreau’s Walden and Frost’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening and the like. And I threw up my hands and said, “Fine. Fine, I’ll do it. But can I please have a moment to myself before there are students in my face?” My administrator left, and I burst into tears.

Then I woke up. And in the shower, I realized: there I was, donating my possessions, my time, my car, my wife’s patience, to my students, and my school was still screwing around with me for no good reason – and I was still doing what they asked. I do everything that is asked of me, and I do it as well as I possibly can, which is generally pretty well. And I do what is really required: I try to do what is best for my students.

Even my subconscious is tired of me worrying about this crap.