tired and sleepless

My superhero power is on the fritz. What power? Being able to fall asleep nearly instantly, almost anytime and anywhere. I've fallen asleep in odd positions, in the middle of a phone conversation, even standing during a loud rock concert at least once. Yet I've been in bed and out of bed and back into bed for an hour and not yet a minute of shut eye. I think it's a combination of residual caffeine in my system and anxiety about the events to come in the next few days. Alex and houseguest playing multiple rounds of a usually lengthy and engaging computer game late at night may not help. If my day tomorrow wasn't supposed to start so early, I wouldn't mind as much. But I know that I'll be hating my alarm clock in the morning more, with each sleepless minute that passes. Physically I feel exhausted. And I have a phone interview tomorrow (I don't know what time!)

The key aspect of the phenomenological experience of this mild insomnia is that I feel far too many thoughts running through my head, one after another, each one interrupting the one before and leading me down a new path. This symptom causes me to believe that my inability to fall asleep is due to overactivity in my brain. I don't remember how long ago it would have been, but before I discovered my power of instasleep, I'd sometimes have trouble falling asleep. And I used to have the exact same feeling. My trick back then was to visualize numbers as I counted down from 99. I will try that. If that fails, I'll imagine a relaxing, tranquil scene. Like a waterfall or a beach. Or what life will be like a week from today.

Maybe I should test a new set of earplugs. We still have enough.