Fester in my skull

One of the best pieces of advice I got…tell yourself a story in your head. Pick a book, movie, show, game, whatever you’re very familiar with and tell yourself that story. Start from the very beginning and be as detailed as possible. You’ll be out in 5 minutes. I used to do it with KotOR but after a while I got so familiar with it that it stopped working.

Nowadays I write like Star Trek fanfic with convoluted explanations, and attempt scripting out new movies in my head

Well, I once had chemical induced insomnia from a Pepsi I drank too late and even God himself couldn’t have fixed that one, it was annoying as heck. But what I did is I lay in bed and I thought about stuff all night. Currently I’m worldbuilding a space fic so it was mostly about space. And I started imagining what the scenes would look like, what dialogue I would write. I usually do that anyway to fall asleep but the damn chemicals did keep me up. I do not recommend the chemicals.

So I guess, for real you actually do have to quit caffeine and alcohol. Also don’t give up and look at the internet. That shit is wakeful asf. I actually use it to banish grogginess in the morning, it is better than coffee. Also! Don’t ever look at the time. If you perceive the time going by it just stresses you out which slows down sleep. Time is an illusion. Even 1 hour of sleep will improve on how you currently feel.

I guess you can try breathing and counting and stuff, I always find that I get bored doing that. That’s why I like to imagine things. But it has to specifically be unrelated to anything stressful. Godspeed my brothers.

I take prescribed sleeping medication that usually works. If it happens to not I’ll smoke some pot and I’m sound asleep till a reasonable hour in the morning.

Stay awake

Doomscroll

Fap

Eventually, I had to go to a doctor for a diagnosis. Apparently I can’t breathe at night.

Podcasts.

Rot until 4AM, then ruminate in the b a d thoughts until exhaustion gives way to alarms and caffeine

I put a particle physics or cosmology video on in the background, where the subject matter veers into some math, and it is just outside my range of intuitive comprehension.

It lets me find a headspace where I can selectively pay attention to things, but also drift away when the subject matter is just leaking out my other ear

Eventually I’ll just be asleep

read, eventually I fall asleep. sometimes 3am, sometimes 5AM but I have no alarm clock or cummute, ao i wake up when i need a piss :)

I saw a hack, years ago, probably on reddit since I was there at the time (so, long ago) that was like thinking “since I’m awake, let me just get up and do some chores”, like washing yesterday’s dishes you left in the sink to soak. Apparently at the prospect, you then sleep like a baby It’s a similar brain glitch to like once the alarm goes off and you hit snooze, I fall asleep in seconds. Stupid brains…

Drink heavily

DO NOT FUCKIN TAKE THAT AS ADVICE

Turn on pink noise and scroll Lemmy