So tired of waking up tired

(with apologies to the Hoodoo Gurus!)

For the past maybe two weeks or so I have been suffering pretty

regularly, and sometimes quite severely, from insomnia. This is

• super* unusual for me. I very occasionally have the odd single night

of trouble sleeping, but for the most part I have always been able to

sleep like a champ. Anywhere, any time.

I don't really know what has been driving my recent troubles. An

obvious thing to blame is the arrival of summer, which this far North

means the arrival of unrelenting illumination: sunset at about 22:00,

sunrise at about 03:30. But we got good curtains up in our bedroom

well in advance of this, and I don't remember having this kind of

trouble in Finland where it was just as bad (trouble waking up

during the inverse scenario in winter, you bet). I also suspect that

stress from the breakneck pace of Gemini development is probably

playing some kind of a role, too, but it also seems strange that it

could cause such severe problems for so long.

When the problem first struck I decided to try eliminating caffeine

intake in the evenings, and this immediately yielded two consecutive

nights of top-grade sleep. "Aha!", I thought, "I've cracked it.

Somehow I've gotten much more sensitive to caffeine as I've aged.

Sad, but I can deal with it". Then, after those two nights, it

stopped making any difference at all. Now I've tried not just cutting

out evening coffee but replacing it with supposedly sleep inducing

tea, to no effect. I've tried drawing the blinds in the living room

earlier than usual and switching to lamps or candles to simulate an

earlier sunset, to no effect. Nothing seems to work.

The cumulative effect of all this over many nights is just really,

really draining and I'm so ready for it to be over.