Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This?)

So...Who Am I To Disagree?!

I first learned the word insomnia when I was ten years old.

Not from a doctor or a dictionary, but from an offhand comment my mom made after finding me wide awake—again—at 2am, quietly rearranging the books on my shelf by flashlight. I was pretending to be a librarian.

She sighed, equal parts amused and exasperated, and said, “You’re going to have insomnia your whole life at this rate.”

My mom knew because she had it, too. So did my grandmother. Seems insomnia was common on that side of the family. My dad? He could sleep through a tornado.

While other kids at daycare took naps, I watched soap operas with the teachers.

Even then, a 20-minute disco nap guaranteed a sleepless night.

When sleep didn’t come, I lay in the dark with eyes open, brain buzzing, body twitchy. I tried counting sheep. I whispered prayers. I meditated, imagined fantasy worlds, and devised elaborate escape plans. I stared at the ceiling. And I cried. A lot.

Sleep was everyone else’s friend but mine.

Around the same time I realized there was a word for what I had, I also fell in love—at first sight—with Annie Lennox. The music video for “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” was just amazing. So was the song. So was the singer.

What a vision of love for this sissy who couldn’t sleep worth a damn.

Flame-haired and fierce-eyed, dressed in a man’s suit, commanding a room full of cows and computers like some gender-bending CEO from the future, Annie Lennox didn’t move like a man or a woman—not in any way I’d seen before. She moved like herself. And that voice? It was the most beautiful, haunting lullaby I’d ever heard:

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something…

I didn’t understand half the lyrics at the time, but I felt them. They sounded like the inside of my own head at night—searching, haunted, untethered.

Annie didn’t sing like she was trying to lull anyone to sleep.
She sang like she was trying to wake everyone up.

And while Annie couldn’t cure my insomnia, she gave me something almost as powerful: recognition. A sense that feeling different wasn’t something to hide or apologize for. That even in my darkest, loneliest hours, someone else might be feeling the same way.

Since then, I’ve spent a lifetime chasing sleep.

I’ve tried all the so-called good sleep hygiene tricks: no screens before bed, blackout curtains, white noise machines, chamomile tea, reading instead of doomscrolling. I’ve also kept notebooks by the bed to unload my racing thoughts. I’ve experimented with a carousel of supplements—melatonin, valerian root, GABA, CBD.

For the past ten years, my most reliable sleep aid has been THC edibles. Five to ten milligrams is usually enough to ease the tension and slow the mental treadmill.

But even that’s a delicate dance. Too much and I’m groggy and/or high all day.
Too little and I might as well have had a Flintstones vitamin.

And then…last night happened.

At the recommendation of my dear friend Drew (a man with impeccable taste and an encyclopedic knowledge of supplements), I tried some “high absorption” magnesium before bed.

I wasn’t expecting much. But I woke up this morning having had, quite possibly, the best night of sleep in my entire life.

Truly. Out cold. Minimal tossing and turning. No mind-movies. No 4am ceiling stares.

If anything, the sleep might’ve been too good. I’m still groggy, two hours past my preferred wake-me-up-so-I-can-go-go time. My brain feels like it’s been dipped in molasses. My limbs have the consistency of bread dough.

I’m not sure if this is what being well-rested is supposed to feel like. Or if I just woke up from a mini-coma. Either way, it’s progress. And I’ll take it.

In my current dazed and dreamy state, I keep hearing Annie’s voice echo in my mind like a spell:

Hold your head up…keep your head up…movin’ on.

I don’t know if sweet dreams are made of anything. But I do know they’ve been hard to come by in my world. When they do come, they feel like tiny miracles.

So who am I to disagree?
Clint

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FOR YOUR (SUBSTACK) CONSIDERATION

• Expectations Will Kill You (Undividing with Karl Dunn)

• It's Time We Stop Giving Labels All the Power (Ace Dad Advice)

• Why is Non-Monogamy So Common in the Gay World? (Coach Kevin Martin)

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ON THIS DAY = JULY 30

BIRTHDAYS

• 1818 = Emily Brontë = English novelist and poet

• 1863 = Henry Ford = American engineer, businessman, and Ford Motor Company founder

• 1898 = Henry Moore = English sculptor and illustrator

• 1906 = Frank Coombs = English artist, architect, and art dealer 🌈

• 1922 = Henry W. Bloch = American businessman and H&R Block co-founder

• 1926 = Betye Saar = American artist

• 1929 = Sid Krofft = Canadian-American puppeteer and producer

• 1936 = Buddy Guy = American singer-songwriter and guitarist

• 1938 = Terry O'Neill = English photographer

• 1939 = Peter Bogdanovich = American actor and filmmaker

• 1941 = Paul Anka = Canadian singer-songwriter and actor

• 1947 = Arnold Schwarzenegger = Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor, and politician

• 1950 = Frank Stallone = American singer-songwriter and actor

• 1954 = Ken Olin = American actor, director, and producer

• 1956 = Anita Hill = American lawyer and academic

• 1956 = Delta Burke = American actor

• 1958 = Kate Bush = English singer-songwriter

• 1961 = Laurence Fishburne = American actor

• 1962 = Alton Brown = American chef, author, and producer

• 1963 = Lisa Kudrow = American actor and producer

• 1964 = Vivica A. Fox = American actor

• 1966 = Sean Patrick Maloney = American politician 🌈

• 1967 = Pascal Smet = Belgian politician 🌈

• 1968 = Terry Crews = American actor and football player

• 1969 = Simon Baker = Australian actor, director, and producer

• 1970 = Christopher Nolan = English-American filmmaker

• 1971 = Christine Taylor = American actor

• 1971 = Tom Green = Canadian comedian and actor

• 1974 = Hilary Swank = American actor

• 1977 = Jaime Pressly = American actor

• 1980 = Seth Avett = American singer-songwriter

• 1982 = Martin Starr = American actor and comedian

• 1984 = Gina Rodriguez = American actor

• 1997 = Finneas O'Connell = American singer-songwriter, producer, and actor

EVENTS

• 1932 = Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees premieres. It’s the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.

• 1935 = Penguin Books launches, starting the paperback revolution. In its first ten months, it prints one million paperbacks.

• 1965 = POTUS Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.

• 1975 = American labor-union leader Jimmy Hoffa disappeared after last being seen outside a restaurant near Detroit.

• 2003 = In Mexico, the last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line.

• 2006 = The world's longest running music show Top of the Pops is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years.

HOLIDAYS + OBSERVANCES

• International Day of Friendship

• National Cheesecake Day

• National Climb A Mountain Day

• National Whistleblowers Day

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PORTRAIT + QUOTES OF THE DAY

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”
Henry Ford

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
Henry Ford