Blank Mind

As I grapple with Middle of the Night Insomnia, the recommended Sleep Hygiene action that I neglected most has been to set a time limit on returning to sleep.  I have more often than not acquired one more sleep cycle but usually quite a bit later.  This additional 60-90 minutes makes or breaks the following day.  Last night I resolved to follow the advice, departing for My Space and the comfy recliner in still looking at the clock a just over a half hour later.  Not succeeding in slumber, I arose for that lounge chair in the other room.  Formal guidance recommends either reading or watching something not requiring much focus on TV so I turned on an episode of New Scandinavian Cooking which Andreas had devoted to chocolate.  I remained awake to the end.  Then transfer the screen from Infinity to Netflix.  I don't even remember what show I ordered the remote to display but that's my last recollection until awakening two and a half hours later, or one and a half hours before my wrist alarm would signal out of bed time has arrived.

Most likely I really fell asleep, probably two sleep cycles.  If I achieved REM's dream state, I don't remember.  In fact, I have no recollection of that time at all but when I awoke Netflix was still on the big screen TV with some modern equivalent of a test pattern.  I remember nothing after switching from one TV format to the other.  Sleep science affirms that the mind becomes more restorative than absent during these intervals, yet I have no sense of the many dangling elements of my waking mind that achieved resolution this morning.

I returned to bed, remaining horizontal but mentally aware until my usual out of bed time, which has almost never been my real wake time.  But I feel mostly OK, as if those two additional sleep cycles really took place.