On a side note, one pet peeve is the fact that this is the second time writing this blog post. It got deleted by a computer glitch and I'm super unenthused.
The pet peeve I'm going to be talking about today really grinds my gears and sparks an urge to go off on this tangent on a regular basis. If you take things personally, you should redirect yourself to this website as it may be more appropriate for you.
Back to the point, I want to explain something about myself first before we delve into this topic. I characterize myself as a night owl. I stay up until around 2:30 a.m. on a regular basis. This is not because I can't fall asleep earlier, it is because I don't want to and I would rather exercise my privilege of having an Internet connection.
Before continuing, I would like to present a definition kindly provided by Google...
in·som·ni·a
/inˈsämnēə/
Habitual sleeplessness; inability to sleep.
sleeplessness - wakefulness - vigilance
I really want to emphasize the word habitual in this definition. Meaning that this inability to sleep happens regularly. And insomniacs by this definition, regularly experience an inability to sleep. This means that insomniacs lay in bed each night at the same time with their phone off, and eyes shut - no distractions - and cannot fall asleep. Because of this, many insomniacs take up hobbies or interests to help exhaust themselves and pass the time until their body finally is able to fall asleep.
For example, in the 1959 television show, The Twilight Zone, there is an episode titled The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. In this episode, the residents of Maple St. begin to question each other after an unidentified flying object is spotted going over the street, as well as many other unusual occurrences. The street is convinced that one of their peers is an alien, as ridiculous as it seems. At one point in the episode, a woman states that when she stays up late at night, she sees one of the characters, Les Goodman, staring up at the sky "as if he is looking for something." This quickly puts Goodman's name in question and he defends it by explaining that he is an insomniac and enjoys stargazing to help him leisurely pass the time until he is able to sleep.
[If you are interested in watching this episode - or the part mentioned which starts around 11 minutes in - you can stream it here. It's a great episode, and I highly recommend the show in general - it is incredibly smart. This episode in particular speaks greatly of society's need to place blame and find an explanation for things they do not understand.]
Being the night owl that I am (like many others my age), I usually start to see Facebook statuses and tweets at around 1:00 a.m. that look something like this... "OMGGG GO AWAY INSOMNIA" (real tweet from someone I follow on March 8, 2013). However, @MensHumor may be more accurate with their diagnosis from Dec. 12, 2011; "I don't have insomnia... I have internet connection."
Our bodies develop a schedule by which they sleep. This means that if you don't usually fall asleep until 2:30 a.m., like myself, chances are that going to sleep at 11:00 p.m. in order to be well rested for your 8:00 a.m. exam the next morning are unlikely. Obviously you will struggle to fall asleep because your body is not used to sleeping so early and has adjusted to your late night Netflix-watching habits. It's like trying to tell yourself to be hungry for a Thanksgiving dinner after you've already eaten (without purging yourself). It isn't possible and your body's sleep schedule works the same way.
I'm not saying that only insomniacs struggle sleeping. On Friday night/Saturday morning, I didn't fall asleep until 4:00 a.m. and then woke up at 6:30 a.m. After that, I didn't fall asleep again until 10:00 a.m. Needless to say it was a rough night. If this happened to me on a nightly basis, I would - without a doubt - be an insomniac. Which is why the word habitual was so important in the definition of insomnia. This doesn't happen to me nightly. I'm not an insomniac, and if I wanted to sleep earlier, I could adjust my sleep schedule to do so. That is the prime difference between staying up late and being an insomniac.
We need to keep in mind that it is a medical condition and a sleeping disorder. It should not be taken lightly. To say that you're depressed after one bad day is a little extreme, just as saying that you suffer from insomnia after one night is a little extreme.
Next time you're not able to sleep, do something to help exhaust your body so you can fall asleep. I can almost promise you that tweeting about it while you lay in bed will not help the situation.
If you need help thinking of something you could do, searching your couch for the next morning's coffee money might be a good idea - you're probably going to have a rough one. But it happens. Deal with it.
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