What to do with insomnia?

What do you do when you've tried all the recommended actions by the experts in sleep and you're still awake - and getting more irritable by the second - hours after going to bed?

There are all sorts of suggestions out there from drinking warm milk to getting up and doing something different for ten minutes. Both of those are out for me. Milk tends to make my IBS symptoms flare up, while getting up and moving around is out for obvious reasons.

Tonight I opted to stay in the riser chair again. My husband has a bad cold which, when mixed with asthma, does not make for an easy night's sleep for him. I figured it was my turn to look after him and the best thing I could give him was some peace for the night.

The chair is easily as comfortable as the bed, as it is piled in pillows and blankets. Sleep, however, is choosing to evade me. I'd chase the bugger down and kick it's arse if that was possible. It isn't, so I've made do with reading, catching up with online gossip, listening to music with the hope of falling asleep. I also tried listening to an audiobook with the hopes of falling asleep. It's almost 7am and I am still awake. Tired, a wee bit irritable, but still awake.

I've read dozens of blog posts and advice columns telling me to lie in a certain direction and relax before bed-time. Been there, done that and it still isn't helping! Right now I would give a less favoured body part to be able to sleep, so if anyone out in planet blog has any unusual suggestions that I may not have tried before, please contact me.

E-book or printed, that is the question...

We all know that technology has altered the way that we live, communicate and understand the world around us. One of the biggest innovations in the world of books has been the advent of e-books. No longer do people have to carry around huge bags full of books that weigh heavily on the back as we struggle to haul them about. Now we can carry hundreds of books on one small tablet.

If we choose to, that is.

Many readers prefer to remain with the world of printed novels and I'm sure that none of us would deny that there is something special about picking up a beautifully bound new book. The feel, the weight, the smell and even the sound as you open it up for the very first time... It all adds up to something truly special. And yes, I know, spoken like a true book-worm!

But however special a printed novel is, even I have to admit that there are a few problems. The biggest for me, is storage. I have around eight hundred novels on my kindle at the moment, along with five audiobooks; most of those books are novels that I do not own printed copies of. While I am sure that the elite in our society would not have a problem finding space for an additional eight hundred novels, I definitely would.

Living in a two bedroom flat, there is not the room to house an additional eight hundred books so in that way my kindle has been invaluable in allowing me to read novels I would not have been able to, otherwise. I do, of course, use my local library quite extensively - as we all should if we want to keep the Government from removing them from our locale. But I can't suddenly change my mind in the middle of the night and read a library book that is not already in my possession.

Having the kindle means that I can flick to a different novel with a couple of presses of the keyboard. For me, there is also the additional benefit that the light weight and size of the kindle means that it is less painful to hold. I can only read printed novels on rare occasions now, even with my book stand, as not only are they painful to hold, my eyesight can vary while I am reading. It is much easier to alter the size of the text on an electronic book; something that is impossible on a printed novel.

So, yes, I am a fan of e-books and I do believe that they have a place. However I still love - and always will - printed novels. I have a number of limited edition signed books that mean a lot to me simply because they are beautiful items that deserve a place in my home.

Oh - plus in all honesty I really wouldn't like to troll through an e-book version of some of my academic text books. I have just glanced to my right and my copy of The Oxford Classical Dictionary, third edition revised (Hornblower and Spawforth) looking back at me. I paled slightly at the thought of an e-book version of that.

Mental Olympics

I have always struggled to maintain concentration on one subject. At school I could be sitting in a classroom and a passing cloud would completely capture me; I would have no clue what happened in the rest of the lesson because I had gone away into my own head, my own imagination. As an adult, I am forced to admit that nothing has changed. 

I cannot do one thing at a time. I quite literally cannot. My mind is in too many places, jumping over all the possibilities, all the entertaining things that there are; things that I could be doing. I have never, ever been able to read 'just' one book at a time. I have several on the go at any one moment and will jump in and out of them at random, switching from story to story. In between I will draw, or watch TV or talk or...the list is endless. 

I genuinely cannot say whether having fibromyalgia has changed this. If I try and think about it, try and focus for a minute, I think that nothing has changed that much. I still fit and have to be doing several different things at the same time. The only thing that really throws me is noise. I have never had much tolerance for noise - neither have my brother, or my mom - but now it is as though all noise blends into one. If there is background noise and you ask me a question, please do not expect an answer. All I will have heard is a random noise that will not have made much sense to me. A little like Charlie Brown's teacher where all you hear is "Wah, wah, wah, wah". 

Mind you, saying that I'm sitting here typing one thing while having a conversation with Pete about people murdering apple trees (cutting them down), so maybe it is not quite as bad as I sometimes think.