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Sleep and Lack of It

So now I'm having a hard time sleeping. Think of it this way: I get to sleep at 4 am, then wake up exactly 6 hours after that. I wouldn't call it lack of sleep entirely, but when after 6 hours of "sleep", you feel tired, it's as good as not sleeping at all.

I'm getting cranky, impatient, and unproductive as ever. I'm running out of ideas as to how to deal with this in a better manner than blogging about it, so I'm trying that.

As I'm writing this (offline, because I haven't dealt with the internet connection at home problem yet -- not too much a priority compared to all the other expenses moving to a new place entails) I'm watching CNBC to try and lull myself to sleep with business news. If you know me, it's hard for me to find anything on TV uninteresting: then maybe just listening to unending blabber would help my mind rest; which is highly unlikely.

I'm going to give this a few minutes -- if I start yawning then it's done its job. If that doesn't work, I'll have to flick to MTV (and try to bear with the bad music at this time of the day, 2 am Philippine time) and worse *gasp* Fashion TV. Maybe something else will keep my mind wanting to go to hibernation mode soon -- and when I find that out I'll write about it.

Right now I'm trying to write everything that's on my mind so that I can concentrate on the things I'm thinking about and dump them all down here. So I'll put down bullet points on what's keeping me up right now:

* The Career: it's going all good, had really great news and not so good news during the day that I've been hoping it would settle me down enough to be able to sleep.

* Personal Improvement: I'm on track with my "learn a new programming language" track, where this year spending more time with Python is going very well. Now I'm learning Python+Django with a sprinkle of Javascript+Ajax and CSS.

* Family life: I miss my mom, dad, sister, niece, and nephew. My grandma I've been able to see last week, but I'd like to be able to go spend more time with her and aunts and cousins. Maybe this coming weekend will be a good time to spend with family and loved ones. I wonder when I'll be back in the US, but I have no idea when that's going to happen again -- so it may be a while before I can go see my mom again, and I miss her badly.

* Investment Portfolio: Believe me or not, this thing keeps me up most nights -- I'm trying to run through the investments I've made and the investments I'll make to take advantage of my most productive years; and see my portfolio for the short term (1-2 years), medium term (5-8 years), and long term (10-20 years).

* Open Source Projects: Right now there are three competing open source projects that I'm involved in; C++ Networking Library, Memcache++ Client, and the Runtime Dynamic Dispatcher. These all require some time from me, and the list of things to do in cpp-netlib is short for a 1.0 release, the Memcache++ Client needs some more documentation, and the Runtime Dynamic Dispatcher is ready for a 1.0. Now getting the time to go get things done is something else; and that's keeping me up at night.

So what are my solutions? I've tried the following:

* Handheld gaming: My girlfriend's PSP is with me, but playing a game while in bed doesn't help me sleep one bit.

* Reading the Harvard Business Review: I thought this would lull me to sleep, but it's giving me ideas on how to run my imaginary future business.

* Reading the Entrepreneur Magazine: I don't know what I'm thinking, but I buy these magazines regularly -- but reading it puts my mind to overdrive and makes me think about being an entrepreneur more someday.

* Reading Newsweek: Yes, I read newsweek (and Time occasionally) but it keeps my mind awake.

* Programming: So no, I don't get bored programming (which is my passion anyway so good luck to me getting tired doing what really gets me up in the morning to do).

* Boob tube surfing: I guess that doesn't work either because I'm still writing this.

But just now, after finishing that last bullet point I let out a yawn -- and my eyes are getting droopy too. I think this writing thing is helping me sleep; hearing myself talk in my brain and writing down my thoughts seems like good therapy for insomnia.

So I'll save this document, post it up to my blog when I get online (and hopefully you'd be reading this from my blog soon right after).


(Update: No, I was not able to sleep immediately after that yawn. So yes, I need to find more ways of finding more sleep.)


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