Politics

Tanya Sweeney: I wake at 4am every day – will tips from sleepmaxxers or a $4,000 mattress cure my insomnia?

In the small hours of the morning, there’s a game I like to play: If I Get To Sleep Now, I’ll Manage to Get X Hours of Sleep. It goes a little something like this: you look at the clock at 2am, or 3.15am, then 4.27am, or 5.20am, and you calculate how much sleep you might get, were you to fall asleep in that very moment. It’s a game, mainly, of trying to keep the panic out of your system as the clock ticks inexorably towards 7am. “Well,” you think to yourself. “I could get two hours, if I were to just conk out now.” But conk out, you never do. This only ever happens about 10 minutes before the ring of the alarm clock. The sleep that you eventually fall into before the alarm clock goes is the most canyon-deep sleep you will ever have. The vicious sound of the alarm makes the blood turn to anti-freeze. A less-than-ideal start to the day.

In the small hours of the morning, there’s a game I like to play: If I Get To Sleep Now, I’ll Manage to Get X Hours of Sleep. It goes a little something like this: you look at the clock at 2am, or 3.15am, then 4.

27am, or 5.20am, and you calculate how much sleep you might get, were you to fall asleep in that very moment. It’s a game, mainly, of trying to keep the panic out of your system as the clock ticks inexorably towards 7am.

“Well,” you think to yourself. “I could get two hours, if I were to just conk out now.” But conk out, you never do.

This only ever happens about 10 minutes before the ring of the alarm clock. The sleep that you eventually fall into before the alarm clock goes is the most canyon-deep sleep you will ever have. The vicious sound of the alarm makes the blood turn to anti-freeze.

A less-than-ideal start to the day. Actually, who am I kidding? I hate this game..