Sometimes, I wish that I had more knowledge of how actions while awake impacted my sleep patterns. This is a question that I have been pondering for some times now, having a somewhat scattered past of irregular sleep patterns over the past three or four years.
I have an irritating tenancy to stay awake for much longer than is considered healthy for a person of my age, sitting up in my room or in the living room long into the early morning hours, reading or watching those obscure documentaries that are aired on the 'Sci-Fi' and 'National Geographic' channels at such times. I often wonder how many people are really interested in "The great mysteries of the unknown" at 4 o'clock in the morning, the viewing figures must be through the roof.
I have tried going to sleep earlier at at set times each night to make sure I at least get a certain number of hours sleep but no matter how many times I try and correct the problem, I seem to slip right back into my old habits after no longer than a week or so.
Lately though, I've being trying a lot harder to correct my sleep patterns. You see, every couple of months it seems, I start to have very vivid and detailed dreams, and in some cases, nightmares. Unlike what I would call my 'normal' every day dreams, which are nowhere near as vivid or memorable I might add, these seem to last days, sometimes weeks at a time, only to find myself waking up every morning in the same curled up position as the night before.
The subject matter and setting every night seems to differ widely as well, whereas other people with very much the same problem commonly have blocks or 'series' of similar dreams running over a consensus of night's or weeks mine always seem detached from one another and to show no consistency what so ever.
I could just as easily be roaming the streets of some war torn city as be laying in a hammock on a huge open field.
In a way I find this very distressing. Not only do these dreams deter me from a pleasant nights sleep but they often slowly turn bitter, making the sudden transaction from dream to nightmare. This is indeed the one and only similarity that they all show in common with one another.
Of course these dreams could be caused by a million different things that I'm perhaps doing wrong in my waking life, without the faintest idea. And in that, there lies something very unsettling for me.
Two weeks and four days. I hope this passes soon.
