The Un-Eternal Sunshine of the Subconscious Mind

Never in my life have I found it easy to sleep. Its just my head is always filled with so many thoughts that falling into semi-consiousness is extremely difficult to achieve. However, I have arrived at the time in my life when it is especially difficult to fall asleep because not only do I have many thoughts about life and what not, but also of my, repeat, especially hectic schedule. With school, homework, and other irritations of life, it has never been more challenging to easily go to bed successfully. I think it doesn't help that I take a shower before I go to sleep, because it is very, very relaxing, and I guess I hope at the end of everyday that a shower is what it takes to get my mind off projects, homework, and --stop me before I begin listing. But while my strategy does work, it always seems to backfire.

It is true: taking a shower does wash away the worried thoughts of the day. But then, once you are stress free, you begin to think about the things that actually interest you, and this is the start of a process that is arguably just as bad as not being able to get stressful thoughts off your mind. With stresful thoughts, you don't want to think about them, but you kinda have to, for beside that being sorta how the human mind works, you always have that obligatory, crucial, yet occasionaly annoying feeling that you have to think about these things in order for your entire world not to explode due to a missed homework assignment or a failed project. With having thoughts about things you like, all the symptoms above apply, added to the fact that this time you want to things that interest you, which is a far more severe and powerful stimilus that conducts this bombardation of thoughts that will later on in the day make it seem impossible to fall asleep.

The shower is relaxing, but its peaceful pal does not last enough in my case, for after I take a shower, it is at least an hour and a half before I go to sleep, so it is inevitable that the Shower Effect will wear off. This is the point were the stressful thoughts begin to return, added to the thoughts off the things that actually interest me, to create a behemoth mass of thoughts comparable to the Atomic Bomb. And my ability to go to sleep is Hiroshima. Needless to say, it never goes very well for my ability to sleep.

And then I go to sleep. Horray! And the rainbows shine, the confetti falls, the angelic music is played, the crowd cheers,  andThe Hurt Locker wins best picture, oh joy oh joy, the credits roll in... And then I wake up.  I look at the clock. Only about five minutes have passed.

Yip dee doo...