Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Sounds like a personal problem

Am I only the only one who has this problem? It seems like everytime I have to wake up earlier than my normal routine I can't sleep the night before. It never fails and the following day is subsequently ruined as a result.

I usually wake up around 7:30 and roll into work around 8:30. This morning I had some lame training session to attend meaning I had to be at work at 7:30. The training was pretty much a complete waste of time in case you were wondering, but there were donuts and it's never wrong to pretend like you care about advancing your career when you know the boss will be there. Anyway, waking up earlier enough to make it in at 7:30 is not a big deal to me. Due to my poor diet, lack of fitness, and just overall malaise I find that I'm tired all the time. This sounds like a bad thing, and it probably is with one exception, I can fall asleep whenever I want. So if I have to go to bed at 10:30 because I have to get up early it's never really an issue. Then Eric Syndrome comes into play.

I talked extensively about Eric Syndrome in an earlier post but I haven't figured out how to link to individual posts on my own blog yet because I'm dumb. Eric Syndrome, briefly, is my innate ability to mess things up, not on a catastrophic level, just enough to make my life more annoying than it has to be. So how did it come into play yesterday? I'll tell you. My roommate/coworker plays on a softball team with another coworker. Occassionally when they're going to be missing a few players they ask me to play because they know it will be easy for me to just catch a ride with my roommate (also I like to think it's because I'm money at softball, but I doubt that's the case.) Yesterday he asked me if I could play. The correct answer would have been, sorry Mitch, I can't tonight, Monday Night Football is on and the Redskins are playing and I've been super excited about this game for the last 8 months. Naturally I said I would play. Why? Because Eric Syndrome kicked in right at that moment and I turned into and absent minded tard and forgot that I love football and rarely, if ever, miss a Redskins game, much less a Monday night game, much less the first game of the year. Lucky for me I have mans greatest achievement of the last half century to save me, Tivo. I can still watch the game but my plan of going to bed at 10:30 is shot.

So I get home and watch the game, finally get to bed around 12:30 or 1:00 which gives me about five and a half hours of sleep if I'm lucky, not bad. Of course now I'm kind of pissed because the Redskins lost and I don't fall asleep right away. Once I can't fall asleep immediately it usually means I'm not going to fall asleep for a while. I think that I start concentrating really hard on getting to sleep because I know I only have a few hours and the act of intense concentration actually keeps me awake longer. Then the bed starts getting hot, so I get uncomfortable and start squirming around trying to find a cool spot on the bed. Then I have to turn the pillow over, then switch pillows altogether, then the the blankets off, it just an endless cycle of uncomfortableness. It really just turns into an abject sleep disaster. I'm actually a very sound sleeper, I usually fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow and sleep straight through the night and wake up ready to go in the morning. Last night I tossed and turned eventually falling asleep sometime around 4 a.m. for a little under 3 fitful hours of sleep. Which is probably why I'm about to stab myself in the ear with a pencil just so I can leave work and take a nap.

11 comments:

Wendy said...

mabye you were revved up because you played softball at night, and then got upset that your redskins lost, so you were too worked up to sleep.

or you're just no good at life

Eric said...

jw- your theory would be valid except that it happens to me everytime i have to wake up early, and im awesome at life

iceguy- sometimes when the bed gets to hot i just have to give up trying to sleep and go watch tv or something til i cant keep my eyes open

Los said...

I have this same problem - I think I put far too much pressure on myself to get to sleep early, that I stress over why I didn't get to sleep right away, and then I start calculating how much time I have left to sleep in my head ... then I start wondering if I have to go to the bathroom, etc. Before I know it, it's two hours later, and I'm still not asleep. Awful, awful, awful.

Brian said...

real cool that i am only coworker/roommate. i thought i meant more to you than that. i can understand calling baha only a roommate, or mitch only a coworker.

Brian said...

frese

i had made my comment window not in a separate window because i feared popup blockers. also, when posting a comment you can click on 'show original post' if you want.

needless to say, based on your posted preferences i changed mine for the time being. i will have to ask all my readers which way they prefer...

can you get rid of word verification? did you get a lot of spam posts or something?

Eric said...

Los - I do the same thing, constantly calculating how much sleep i'll get if i fall asleep in the next few minutes.

Brian - You're like a woman, I put roommate/coworker for people who may not you. It's easy than saying my friend Brian, who I work with, and also happens to be my rommate.

And I did get a few spam comments, it's not really a problem but I thought I'd do something before it potentially became a problem, a preemptive strike if you will.

GM-Carson said...

Sleeping has always been a problem for me. I often go to bed tired but just toss and turn. And I always wake up right around 5...with or without alarm clock. I hate it! If I wake up on a Saturday at 5 I want to sleep more, but can't fall back asleep.

By the way, we should link each other's sites. I've seen you on my general baseball blog a few times now.

http://pabaseball.blogspot.com

http://morehardball.blogspot.com

let me know if you're interested.

Mike said...

Usually if I can't fall asleep right away I just turn on the tv in my room. If the lights are off and I'm in bed with the tv on it never takes more than 15 mins.

You made it sound like you go somewhere (like the living room) to watch tv.

Steph said...

oh you poor thing. I do this retarded thing when i can't sleep. I keep looking at the time and counting down how many hours i have left to sleep. However doing this, keeps me AWAKE!
Frustrating much.
Tell them you have a gastro bug and go home early.

Eric said...

C&C music factory - I can't in good conscious link to a blog about the Phillies but I'll hook you up with a link to the other one

Mike-sometimes I do get up and go in the living, the effect is twofold, i get sleepy from the tv and my bed cools off because im no longer in it

Steph-i do the same thing, i also have this problem with light, like the light on my alarm clock and cell phone and tivo all start shining so brightly when i cant sleep that it makes it worse. and i would use the "gastro bug" excuse except that a. its already two days later and b. i dont know what a gastro bug is. well i do using context clues but i just wanted to point out your crazy aussie slang terms because theyre funny

Brian said...

regarding the title of your post, when ever someone said "i need a ball" my high school baseball coach would loudly reply "sounds like a personal problem"

love,
your housemate brian :-)