If you’ve an alarm clock to wake, you need more sleep!

I’m so tired. So very tired.  In the middle of last week I started waking up around five-ish in the morning. Middle age brings with it a man’s need to wander to loo in the middle of the night, but some time ago I perfected the art of drifting somnolently there and back and going straight back to sleep.

Yet for the last ten days I have been lying awake for hours, finally giving up on any hope of restorative sleep, kicking the duvet off me and going to put the kettle on for the Snapper, who takes Lady Dog out for her morning peeper.

Were it March, with the hours of daylight growing longer and earlier I might understand, as I’ve noticed how Alpha Males start waking up really early around that time of year.

Stress is the other factor to consider. Nothing guarantees a bad night’s sleep like a brain spinning mental plates on imaginary rods. Thing is, back when this premature waking started, I was not stressed. Life was good and I was happy.

Now, however, I force myself through my days as if the air were treacle. Everything is such an effort and by 9:30pm I’m dozing in my armchair.

Captain Funtastic I am not. Stubborn, dogged, strong enough to keep going just a little beyond where I should have stopped, I usually enjoy great stamina. Yet take my kip from me and I’m as useless as Samson with a bald bonce.

To mix my Biblical and Homeric metaphors, sleep is my Achilles Heel.

Where there was no stress to justify my insomnia there now thrives plenty. A fuzzy head and turgid brain would not help anyone do their job, but as a writer/teacher/editor, mental alacrity is vital. The autumnal mist lying low on the fields outside has gone by midday, but fog now swirls all day around my brain, refusing to allow me clarity or focus.

All I want to do is crawl into bed, pretend I have no deadlines to fill, no classes to teach, no dog to take out, and sleep, but I won’t do that (see: ‘stubborn, dogged’) because I cannot allow myself to.

At first I blamed last week’s full moon, so glorious as it crept over the horizon, rising vast in glowing harvest gold. Then I remembered the wise words of my friend, the Artist Formerly Known As Snarly.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.