In a desperate effort to gain some weird form of validation, I stole an idea for a blog post and begged my readers to ask me a question. And they did. The buggers. Now I have to answer them.
Question 1: Keith (my blogless* mate) asked “4.56 AM or other similar times that should not exist, what to do when you find your self there”.
The first thing to try and figure out is whether that time should, or should not, exist. It’s entirely possible for that specific time (and others like it) to exist in a very pleasant way. For example, and this is just completely off the top of my head, if you were, say, in the back of a stretch limo, supping champagne from the bottle whilst cavorting in a hot tub with a gaggle of supermodels, you might think “this is a pretty good time”, or (perhaps somewhat more realistically) if you were waiting atop Kilimanjaro for the sunrise, those would both be excellent examples of “times that most definitely should exist”. I’d warrant that if the time was 4.55 AM (in either of our scenarios) and as the second hand clicked round onto 12 everything disappeared to revel it’d all been a dream… well I was pis… you’d be pretty pissed off, right?
I digress (and for longer than you realise, although I really shouldn’t admit that I’ve spent the last few minutes figuring out which supermodels I’ve have in the hot tub with me… now, where was I? Ohh yes, why times shouldn’t exist).
Right, let’s presume that you’ve been trying, and failing, to fall asleep.
If that’s the case then anything beyond 2 AM counts as “a time that should not exist” (as do the years 1981-1984 but that’s a different story..) and you are probably wide awake and silently cursing your inability to get to sleep. You probably have to be up in a few hours for something important like a wedding or job interview (work itself doesn’t count), so you’ll be trying like mad to find that comfy spot in the bed so you can “drop off” (odd phrase that, surely dropping off the bed would wake you up?).
Right, so you are wide awake, so the first thing to do if get up out of bed. Let’s make sure your body knows that sleep is nowhere near, as this is stage one in the trick of “falling back asleep” that always seems to work for me (or at the very least MAY work for me as I’m making this all up as I go along, can you tell?). Right, downstairs, put the kettle on and boil the TV.
Done? Excellent.
Having now successfully blacked out the neighbourhood you can go back to bed.
You see, the only reason you are awake is because you are waiting for an alarm to wake you back up. You know that when the alarm goes off it will herald a new day, and possibly an “important event”. So, rather than lie awake, worrying about the alarm and the pending “important event”, this method removes your source of worry (no electricity = no pesky radio DJ screaming in your ear until you bounce the alarm clock off the floor) and you can fall asleep peacefully.
Simple.
If anyone tries this method, do let me know how it goes as, obviously, YMMV**.
Ohh, and on a final note, if you are thinking of trying this method, I’d really appreciate it if you signed and sent me an official waiver or something first. Anything that absolves me of any blame whatsoever would be ideal. Thanks.
Sleep well.
* Doesn’t make him any less of a man though. Mind you, the big chuffers about 6’5 so I’m not ever really that inclined to argue with him or point out any character deficiencies. What do you think am I? Stupid? No, that is not a question I need answered.
** YMMV means “Your mileage may vary”. It’s one of those ‘geek’ abbreviations that a lot of people don’t understand. But hey, if they CBATG, then obviously the PEBCAK.
