To Sleep, or Not to Sleep

Every so often I do battle with the great beast known as insomnia. It is a mean and heartless beast that offers no mercy as I lay sleepless in my bed. Have you ever tried forcing yourself to think of absolutely nothing in order to fall asleep? Tried that. Sheep? Counted 'em. Tylenol PM? Great for a headache and works like a charm if you want to wake up feeling like you have been zombified. I have tried praying because I can never stay awake when I pray in bed. It's ironic that when I pray in bed I always fall asleep in the middle of it until I actually want to.

The worst part is deciding when you just aren't going to get back to sleep. If you get up too soon you might miss your window, so you keep laying there hoping sleep will take you. When it doesn't you begin to think that maybe you should give up the fight and do something productive instead of just laying there, like writing in your blog for example. But even as you think about what you could be doing you start calculating how long you have been thinking about getting up and wondering if all the extra time you have been laying there might have prepared your mind and body to drift off again. You are frozen like the proverbial deer in headlights. "If I stay in bed I'll never get to sleep and just lay here all night, but if I get up I might miss my opportunity to fall asleep," you tell yourself as you raise your fist to the sky, shaking it in indignation at the predicament you find yourself in and hoping the answer will come to you.

To sleep, or not to sleep. That is the question.