Ever since I got home from my three-week getaway last Friday, my sleep has been both better AND worse than it’s been in years.
Which may sound impossible. But here we are.
The night before last, I could not fall asleep to save my life. I tossed. I turned. I checked my phone’s clock so many times the battery nearly died.
Every sound in the apartment became amplified. The refrigerator hummed like a diesel engine. A car alarm six blocks away might as well have been parked in my living room. Meanwhile, my brain decided 3:17am was the perfect time to revisit awkward conversations from 1998. Classic insomnia.
Then this morning? The complete opposite. I could not wake up.
Not “hit snooze once” could not wake up. I mean full-blown drifting in and out of consciousness, bargaining with myself and my alarm clock through half-formed dreams. Every time I opened my eyes, I rolled over and closed them again.
Lately, I’ve been waking up between 6-7am. But today, I finally crawled out of bed just before 9am. Feeling groggy, disoriented, and oddly guilty, like I had missed an important appointment.
Apparently, my body has decided that if it refuses to sleep one night, it will simply collect payment with interest the next.
Honestly, I don’t know what, if anything, is going on.
Maybe my system is still recalibrating after three weeks on the road. Maybe my internal clock got scrambled somewhere between hotel beds, cruise buffets, freeway hypnosis, late-night snacks, inconsistent routines, and entirely too much caffeine. Or maybe this is simply what happens when a lifelong insomniac accidentally stumbles into actual rest and has no idea what to do with it.
Because balance? I would not know balance if it slapped me upside my head.
Maybe it is fitting that all of this is happening during Mental Health Awareness Month, because sleep and mental health are deeply interconnected.
Pull on one thread and the other inevitably moves with it.
When my anxiety spikes, sleep disappears. And when sleep disappears, everything else starts to feel heavier too. My patience shortens. My focus scatters. Small inconveniences suddenly feel enormous. Even my emotions seem louder, like somebody cranked the volume to maximum and snapped it off there.
And the reverse is also true.
A good night’s sleep doesn’t magically solve life, but it can make life feel manageable again. Softer around the edges.
It is easy to forget how connected everything really is. Sleep affects mood. Mood affects energy. Energy affects motivation. Motivation affects how we care for ourselves. And how we care for ourselves eventually circles back around to sleep again. None of it exists in isolation. Our minds and bodies are constantly negotiating with each other, whether we realize it or not.
Still, I have never been one of those people who gracefully powers down at 10pm and rises with the sun like some well-adjusted woodland creature. Circadian rhythms be damned.
Sleep, for me, has always felt more like a negotiation. Sometimes a hostage situation.
There have been stretches of my life where four hours felt luxurious. Other times I have crashed so hard from exhaustion that I slept half the day away and still woke up tired. It’s rarely made sense, and trying to force it to make sense usually only makes it worse.
The strange thing is that since coming home, I have been sleeping deeper. When sleep finally arrives, it actually feels restorative for once. Less fragmented. Less like hovering just beneath the surface all night waiting for my brain to sound another alarm.
That part has been nice.
But the timing of it all remains absolutely feral.
I’m either staring at the ceiling at dawn or waking up wondering what year it is. There’s not much middle ground to be found.
Maybe this is just an adjustment period. Maybe my body is finally cashing checks exhaustion wrote years ago. Or maybe this is simply adulthood now: realizing your relationship with sleep becomes increasingly strange, unpredictable, and deeply personal the older you get.
Because for something so essential, sleep remains oddly mysterious. We spend nearly a third of our lives doing it, yet so many of us struggle to surrender to it. We fight it. We chase it. We resent it when it will not come and resent the world when it ends too soon.
And yet, when we are deprived of it long enough, everything suffers. Our mental health. Our physical health. Our resilience. Our relationships. Our ability to cope with even the ordinary weight of being alive.
Rest is not laziness. It is maintenance. Repair. Survival.
Maybe that is the lesson my body is trying to teach me right now, even if its delivery method is hit-or-miss.
Either way, for today at least, the snooze button has officially stopped being a suggestion and become something closer to a coping mechanism.
So if you need a friendly reminder, here it is: get some rest. Some deep sleep if you can get it. The world will still be waiting when you wake up.
Keep calm and recharge on!
Clint 🌈✌️
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thru 05-31-26
FROM THE ARCHIVES
BORN THIS WAY ON THIS DAY
05-08 = Darren Hayes (1972- ) = Australian singer-songwriter 🌈
05-08 = Gary Snyder (1930- ) = American poet 🌈
05-08 = Henry Dunant (1828-1910) = Swiss businessman, activist, Red Cross co-founder, and first Nobel Prize laureate 🌈
05-08 = Jessica Platt (1989- ) = Canadian professional hockey player 🌈
05-08 = Nyle DiMarco (1989- ) = American model, actor, and activist 🌈
05-08 = Touko Laaksonen (aka Tom of Finland) (1920-1991) = Finnish artist 🌈
MAN CRUSHES OF THE DAY
“When you hit someone back with understanding or love it stops the cycle of friction. It’s not always easy to do, but when youre aware in the moment you have a choice to respond with love or hate. It’s not rocket science.”
Darren Hayes
“I almost never draw a completely naked man. He has to have at least a pair of boots or something on. To me, a fully dressed man is more erotic than a naked one. A naked man is, of course beautiful, but dress him in black leather or a uniform - ah, then he is more than beautiful, then he is sexy!”
Tom of Finland
I've been on both sides of this seesaw - waking up like clockwork at 3:30 a.m. every night but unable to get through the day without one (or even two naps). Great post, Clint!
I feel your pain! I usually get into bed with a completely inane murder mystery - or maybe read a column or two in a few month's old Harper's. It tends to shift my mental gears into "park"! BTW, found another connection to one of your 'greats' having birthdays today. Back in 1974 or 5, a friend and I were just coming down from an amazing acid trip on a break while I was building my dome in the desert. We'd just "created and let go of" a HUGE wind storm (really) when one of my mates (PhD in English Literature!) who was building HIS house just below mine dropped by with Gary Snyder. We were stark nekkid and did not really appreciate the wonder of who we were trying to have an intelligible conversation with. He must have just been in his own thrall over his prize for "Turtle Island". We really didn't appreciate the encounter until the next day. Ah, such a life!!!