Welcome to another episode of “Can’t sleep?” with your host, “I Forgot to Do Something”. It’s another great night for not sleeping.

Sleeplessness shares good company with hiccups and the appendix: leftover primal functions and medical mysteries.

Sleeplessness is commonly the work of an overstimulated mind. When it’s time to knock out for the day, there’s just one last thing to finish, a nagging worry you want to address, a… memory from 14 years ago needing remembering. And then, you’ve dipped into half the required slumber you need to be “A” game.

Try this new Counting Sheep:

1. Visualize: See yourself as asleep.
2. Lists are known to induce drowsiness: Pretend you are telling a friend your bedtime routine, walking through it step by step.
3. Describe how you wind down. Describe a body check. Toes intact. As far you as can tell, organs intact, content. Saw aloud one word descriptions of how you feel physically and emotionally.
4. Like lists, dry and technical explanations bore yourself into a slumber: Pretend a child doesn’t know what “blank” is, so you explain it to them. Fill in ‘blank’ with any topic of your choice that’s 3 degrees from things you really like to talk about. What is the function of blank?

If you can’t zzzzzzzzzzzzzz then do the next best: yyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Divide your rest into a few long naps like the (g)olden times. Expect that your internal clock is going to be different for a while.

You can plan the following day’s naps. Here in this sleepless sanctuary, there are naps without judgement. Plus, if you have chronic insomnia, sleep hygiene isn’t important yet. Don’t look at the time– think nothing of calculations. Only use neutral to positive words like sandwich, upstream trout, or pink sky.

Does this nap take place outside in coma inducing sun and breeze? To the sound of waves? or, if you’re not by water, to the smell of lemon flowers? A section of grass is prickly and damp, so you find a more dry spot, maybe a worn rocking chair, the seat a faded a tan Maple, while the backrest a less worn Acacia brown turning Olive. Swinging in a plushy hammock. It feels like the layover between flights…brick feet drag anchor eyelids to your gate…personal luggage becomes cloud. Remember the most desperate of times you wanted to knock out…an all nighter essay, morning class in a warm lecture hall, monotone ramblings in gibberish…