I have a nasty case of what medical professionals call insomnia. In bed, I lay; I stare; I wait; I never fall asleep. It sucks and it’s been that way pretty much all my life.
I’ve done a couple sleep studies that amounted to useless advice. I’ve also tried a bunch of prescription sleep medications. Those have sort of helped. Instead of waking up in cold sweats to the feeling of being thrown from a moving vehicle, I sleep soundly and restfully. But the drugs don’t help me to slip into that vulnerable, completely relaxed state people reach just before they lose consciousness.
It has only gotten worse in college. There never seems to be enough hours in the day to do everything I want. Instead of wasting time waiting to fall asleep for hours upon hours, I pushed back the time in which my head hit the pillow. 2AM became 4AM which became 6AM and eventually not at all. On average I collect about five-hours of sleep a night. Usually I get somewhere around eight on the weekends but then other times, like for instance a random Tuesday night, I won’t sleep at all. When I tell people that last bit, they usually give me a horrified look of disbelieve. It’s really not as bad as it sounds though.
At the marrow of my insomnia is a psychological problem, obviously. I once read and I strongly believe, if you don’t define yourself, other people will gladly do it for you. It’s that type of thinking that torments me all hours of the day/night and pushes my mind to strange places.
Often, at 4AM when my iTunes is running on its 5th consecutive hour, I find myself in a bizarre, leveled calmness that I otherwise would have trouble reaching. My thoughts slow like they’ve finally adjusted to the stillness of the world and I stop being quite as calculating. It’s at this time when I come up with many of the ideas for the more obscure entries that are published here.
Sometimes while watching Sabres games I notice players like Kaleta or Miller or Myers and I think to myself that there’s a story to be told of one of them. But those angles are almost too predictable and in that way, are just lame in my opinion. Retreading stories is not my thing. So what’s left? Well, feelings, that’s what. And those are always unique in the way they’re presented.
You could say I’ve been pretty optimistic here lately. More than anything else, I think it’s probably a result of my being around so many genuinely optimistic hockey fans. They’re not shitting marshmallows dyed in technicolor, they’re just not the type of people to waste time obsessing over cracks in the pavement. They don’t use sports as a means to make up for the imperfections that exist in their careers, families, finances, whatever either. There’s no doubt that mentality rubs off on me and has been coming through in my writing here lately.
In addition to my friends, the other contributor has been the sleep, or lack-there-of. When you’re sleep deprived, you realize what you want — your real desires: sex, a chicken finger sub, a Guinness or twelve. Then you start to come up with ideas: a YouTube video of fruit like watermelons and cantaloupes being thrown from the roof of the freshmen dorms would go viral in 30 seconds, maybe the Sabres are actually a pretty dangerous playoff team, the Wale CD would probably pretty solid if his raps weren’t so Mc-lame. WAIT, go back. Playoffs – the Sabres – dangerous. Where’s a pen?
People always have great ideas in the shower because the air that’s being breathed is cleaner. The falling water removes all dust and debris from the air causing the oxygen to take up a greater percentage in what’s inhaled, and while the muscles are replenished, the mind is stimulated. The circumstances with which the mind operates is different in the shower and at 4AM when a person has been awake for 20-hours straight. Perspective and a clarity of sorts is gained in those types of situations.
Transferring feelings to text can be tricky and doing so in a way that’s interesting and engaging for hockey fans is a challenge. I’ve never promised greatness or even decency really. But the feelings expressed here have always been genuine and honest or at least those honestly evoked when I’ve been able to clear my mind of distractions and in doing so, grasped some modicum of calmness.