Jul
6
Sleep revisited
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Oh what joy it is to be a light sleeper! Sure, if any crook were to try to get into my house, I would up and at him at a moments notice. Meanwhile, as a consequence if this genetic tendency to be super sensitive to sound otherwise buggers up many a night’s sleep.
This morning, for example.
04:04 The faintest sound of birds tweeting woke me yet again. But I soon drifted back to sleep.
04:45 Bloody mobile phone declares that the battery needs charging by beeping. So I have to go downstairs and switch it off.
05:19 After eventually dropping back to sleep, a cacophony of seagull shrieks awakens me. After 30 minutes lying there, relaxing (or trying - my brain needs sleep but my brain insists on alerting my conscious mind to each and every shriek) I get up and visit the seagulls. There are about 20 clustered around some ripped open black bin bags. They had found some rice and rotten apples that should have been out into the plastic boxes for food waste. I scare them away but struggle to get back to sleep. It takes me at least 30 minutes.
07:20 The council, in their iwsdom decide that this hour of the day is fine for refuse trucks to noisily creep down the road, beeping their horns for good measure.
07:40 Another noise awakens me. Lost interest in what it is.
08:35 Miraculously, I sleep on beyond my normal waking hour, and feel good. Many other days, I would be tired and sleepy all day as a result of these interruptions. Like a form of Chinese torture - I cannot afford to get annoyed at thenoises that awaken me because that is a recipe for staying awake.
If you are a deep sleeper, enjoy your privelege, and marry someone who will wake up when the house is being robbed or is burning down. Those who do not suffer regular sleep deprivation have no idea of the damage it does to enjoyment of life and your health.
Jun
27
Bird song update
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I have had the best night of sleep for over a week and feel fabulous. But it may be in part due to an experiment I carried out.
At 4:30, bird twittering awoke me. As I relaxed, each tweet arrested any slide into sleep. So I told myself to let the sound ride over me. It did not, alas, happen. But eventually I fell asleep.
Only to awaken again at 5:30 to the louder sound of seagulls. I guess you get an idea of what can happen to a sensitive soul.
This time, I was able to ignore them better, and drifted to sleep again.
But underlying this was a resurrection of an attitude that has faded since I finished writing my book on health. Namely that I had gradually become drawn into letting events and how I feel determine how life is going. I was now therefore aware of a need to recreate an attitude that allows me to enjoy each day regardless of what happens. This background to my efforts to ignore birdsong was necessarily a positive one, replacing the negative frustration that has infused such early morning awakenings recently.
So when I slept on to nearly 8:00, I awoke feeling uplifted in mood in addition to wonderfully rested from a complete cycle of sleep. The change of attitude lifted my mood. By seeing the World differently, I felt happier. You do not need a new iPhone, or a big day out to be happy. It is the attitude that you bring to life that determines your level of happiness, and I had lost the plot on that one for a while.
So it was time for me to correct my ways. But I have to say that it has been very difficult this week when my daily focus to relax and holiday has been heavily compromised by day long heavy tiredness from poor sleep. It is easier to focus on the daily events and ignore how bad you might feel when those events engross you. Relaxing does not distract you very well for how you feel.
Jun
25
Contrary brain
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I have finally concluded that my brain acts far too often in a way that is not best suited to my life. It acts contrary to my needs and desires and quality of health.
Much as I would like to rectify this situation, much of the behaviour and habits of the brain are delightfully submerged away from direct conscious control. By way of example, let em describe the start of my day today.
I awoke at 4:30 am. There were no obvious noises that I was responding to. And for sure, I had no desire or need to wake so early. I am actually on holiday and want to lie in! My brain decides otherwise. And never informs me why.
Fortunately, I was able to fall back to sleep for a couple of hours. When I awoke subsequently, I was obviously not fully rested. I needed an hour or more of sleep. Or that is how it felt. I no longer try to force myself to sleep. Or get irritable at being awake when I want to sleep. I just relaxed and drifted back to sleep.
Some short while later, my brain decided to awaken me so that I could listen to the faintest sound of a bird tweet. How on earth such a tiny sound could awaken me I have no idea. Quite why my brain should choose to waken me I have no idea. I would like to tell my brain to never ever waken me to the sound of any bird song again. Bird song is no reason to deprive me of sleep. But how to tell my brain? No idea.
Sleep was later disturbed by my next door neighbour’s alarm. It frequently wakes me before it does my neighbour who is lying right next to it.
I have sleepy sore eyes but can get no more sleep. And a headache also, just for good measure. And yes, my brain does not tell me why. I get up and can sense straight away that I cannot think clearly. The same as 4 other days this week. The stifled mental capacity lasts all day.
Conversely, when I do get that extra hour of sleep, I can think with utmost clarity and have boundless energy all day long. I literally go from one extreme to another, simply by virtue of 1 or 2 hours of sleep difference.
Knowing that failure to get the apparently requisite amount of sleep makes the relaxtion needed to go to sleep hard to achieve. It is all a big lottery as to wether I am dull or sharp minded. True, this is true of most people - they vary in mental shape each day. but it is matter of degree - I vary by vast amounts from one day to the next.
But oh to be able to tell my brain to let me sleep right through each day. To be able to operate at top level every day. Quite who would lose out if I could do this? I am not seeking money or things from others. Merely from myself.
May
2
Rollercoaster
Filed Under Health, Life | 3 Comments
Many who know me actually do not know me. They know a little about me, but mostly allow my apparent superficial, over chatty ways to blind them to anything deeper. And they allow my regular frailalties to label me a hypercondriac. Whilst I agree that I can focus too heavily on ill health and injuries, this is hard to avoid when emotions are triggered so readily by such. To give a sample of health derailment that I have to suffer with, and have to suffer mostly in silence because no one takes my ailments seriously, here is the story for this week.
Wednesday I start feeling a dead ache in my left arm. I ignore it and get on with my day, but it does not fade away. Ignoring ailments and getting on, by the way, is anti-hypochondriac. The ache is so much at night that it badly affects sleep. Again, I try to relax and ignore it, but am only partly successful.
Thursday, I am hanging with tiredness, but continue working on my writing, but by late afternoon feel overly tired.
Friday sees me full of life by mid morning, and become hyper. Overly energised, I work flat out on my book, but know that I need to calm down or the hyper state will get out of hand. As I calm down, my heart paradoxically starts to race. I ignore this as much as I can, although the anxiety that is almost certainly causing it makes me feel very very unsettled. I start to feel frustrated by this rollercoaster of conditions.
Saturday I awake with a pain in my right knee. It may be caused by anxiety, but when it makes walking down stairs difficult, then I have to pay creed to it. I feel somewhat down in mood after the previous two days, but look forward to football in the afternoon, even though I have an mild but irritating left achilles tendon problem from two weeks ago. I play badly, and this injury and the sore knee makes running difficult. And before I leave the pitch, I sustain a right calf strain. Believe me, this is the last thing I want, and again, I accept my fate and limp home, and then to a coffee shop to read a very interesting book on the brain, but feel depressed in the evening.
Sunday I awake with a headache, depression, and a burning feeling in both thighs, but decide to just focus on enjoying the day.
That has been the rollercoaster of the last few days. Even if I am a hypochondriac, what could I actually have done differently to avoid that emotional and physical journey? It is simply a delusion to say that I did not feel the aches and pains and tiredness and depression. It might be that my attitude created these ailments, but if so, I really struggle to work out what I did wrong - each day I tried to just get as normal. If I did think or act in a wrong way, then the consequences were certainly enormously disporoportional to the cause.
After 5 months of strange leg problems, I still await a neurological examination courtesy of the NHS. I mostly get on with life and do not worry about the leg problems, but for 5 months they have compromised what little football abilities I have, and made the games less enjoyable. However, there has been one gain in all that time - 16 years of mostly daily tension headaches are almost a thing of the past.
Mar
25
Teaching the Chinese game of Go
Filed Under Life | 2 Comments
A colleague and I taught Go to year 5 and year 6 classes in a primary school today. The children could barely have been more receptive and fun, nor could they have embraced the game with any more fervour.
Alas, I journeyed home from the school in a state of near exhaustion with a rasping sore throat from all the tuition. I pondered this a lot, since this was not an unexpected outcome. True, there was no respite - even in the children’s break, I was inundated with requests to play and help with the game.
I think, essentially, I had adopted a professional attitude - ensuring maximal uptake and enjoyment and putting myself second. Yes, I can do this. And partly because I am very fond of the attention that children give me. It yearns for reciprocation, which I give.
But the underlying situation is of sensory overload. I am bombarded by new faces - by many friendly faces, and I want to spend time with each - one was deep and serious, the next light and frivolous, another yearning for attention and encouragment.
Reflection of the day was in the back of mind this evening when I was using the excellent ‘Stumble upon’ to look at paintings by artists, eventually zoning in on Black and White images of Jean Simmons. This is one actress I had not drawn before, and as I wondered if there was an image I could draw from, I realised that I mostly failed in the transition from monochromatic pencil drawing because I was overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of colours in painting.
There was a clear parallel here with my sensory overload today, and it again makes me wonder quite how far along the autistic spectrum I might be. It may well be that I compensate for the autisic overload by statying professional, and just getting on when teaching, but then suffering the effects of sensory overload. Much as a trult autistic child would roll into a ball to escape from the very same sensory overload. As I moved today from one child to another, it felt far too trivial to see each child as just another person. I was so acutely aware of the depth of personality, and endeared so deeply to each - children make (and drop) attachments rapidly, having yet to learn the tediously slow defensive posture that adults use, desparate to avoid furthering their social commitments. It is probably because children can detach as rapidly as they attach, as their emotions are light and flighty.
The overload and hence subsequent exhaustion is because I wanted to ignore the education and just socialise, but was compelled to be professional and mostly suppress that route. Conflict is a primary cause of negative stress.
So for me to teach, one on one is best - an equivalent to pencil drawing.
Mar
25
If I were God
Filed Under Life, Psychology | 3 Comments
If I were God, I would be aware of all that was happening. I would see that the man in that house over there was having a fitfull night of sleep the day before an important meeting at work, and I would calm him down, giving him the refreshing sleep that would enable him to operate effectively on that crucial day. I would indeed interfere.
Yet, this eminently sensible and compassionate is generally not permissible for God. He must leave us to get on with our lives.
This problem is morally and ethically isolated. Would, as God, stop a husband beating his wife? Of course. If I cared for and loved ‘my people’ as much as I am supposed to as God, then it is reckless to allow such pain to be inflicted. Would a cat owner allow a dog to maul her cat if she could interfere? Of course not.
But to punish the offender is treading on moral ground. Maybe allow the pain inflicted to be reversed - as the husband struck, it would be he that felt the pain, not his wife. But maybe I would be getting too involved now.
So I would question my purpose as God. Would it be to make life flow smoothly for all? Quite how much suffering should I remove? Removing all would people to be reckless - knowing that I would be there for them regardless.
To me, the removal of the staggering large amount of arbitrary and/or unfair suffering, examples of which I described above, would be the path to take. Being reckless is your own choice, and letting fate take a proportionate response is appropriate.
Feb
1
Mood
Filed Under Life, Psychology | 1 Comment
After just narrowly losing a game of Go on the Internet, I felt angry. I had made a silly mistake mid game and paid the appropriate price. And I have lost a little too many games lately, so my ranking is sliding.
There are two contexts relating to this.
First, that I had decided in December to play games with a focus on my play rather than the result or ranking. I had played well apart from the one mistake, recovering to lose by only 3.5 points.
Second, that I realised that I was in a grumpy mood, and the game was merely an outlet for an expression of disgust with the World.
So I steppped back, averting a fit of pique at the very last moment, and pondered the situation. In the grand scheme of things, losing this game was near zero importance. Maybe if I was living in a war torn country, and the roof over my head had moments earlier collapsed, trapping me deep in rubble, my impending game defeat would have assumed a more appropriate perspective in my head.
When we do suffer something deeply, such as severe illness, and come out the other side, we are so happy to be buzzing with life that we vow never to get caught up by trivial matters. Yet how swiftly we get caught up the angst of tiny details. To keep your head above such details, and see them in the real context of life, such as the highly privileged one that we have in the UK, is remarkedly difficult.
The irony here is that in games of Go, you quickly learn to step above the details and see the whole picture. It is just that transferring that to real life, even the matter of losing a game of Go, is hard.
Feb
1
On average, I get 20 comments on my Blog each week. None ever appear in the Blog because WordPress requires comments to be approved.
Can anyone explain why spammers bother?
Jan
3
Excess
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Being endowed with the memory of a sieve, I cannot recall if I have addressed this matter before. If I have, I hope that I can at least supply a new spin on the matter.
There is some evidence to support my suspician that we are greedy by nature. This opportunist clamouring for all that we can grab almost certainly served us well in the past, where a short excursion to the supermarket was not a possibility.
But this greed is not limited to food. The drive is for greater status, assets, range of friends and so on. But the inevitable consequence of greed is an often repeated overshoot to excess. These individual overshoots are benign in themselves. It is an accumlated excess that fails to serve us.
If we step back, it is easy to see the opposite situation, where countless millions struggle to survive each day. Their life is severely compromised by the daily struggle for food, shelter and the work that might finance their supply.
Many a study has shown that a happy existance is not that far beyond such a struggle. As long as we do not struggle, as long as we have enough and a margin above this that creates a security blanket, then we have the foundation for happiness. Adding more, whether through greed or circumstance, does not have a proportionately enhancing effect on our lives.
Taken to an extreme, a submergence in excess cannot be healthy. Natural tendencies to stop eating when full are overridden by the attraction and ready availability of rich and tasty food. We can only live in one room at a time, no matter how many our mansion contains. And we flounder, lost for direction. When our drive to improve our life is gone - when we have all and more than we need, we are less. We drown in excess.
We cannot easily avoid the instinct to acquire an excess, but we can recognise when it does not serve us, and curb it’s message.
Dec
21
Horses for courses
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Contrary, I suspect, to the opinion of many others, I am very much aware that I have self focussed and blatantly selfish ways. If I did not have these, I would likely slot into the social frabric more readily. But the self-centred streak is very much an instinctive part of my personality.
There are a number of points to make on this matter.
First, that I am not always self-centred. This does not permeate my every action. Indeed, I go to the other extreme, and can be very empathic and generous, often spontaneously so.
Second, the inherent difficulty with my variety of selfishness is that it can be inflexible. If I do not want to do something, I struggle terribly, for instance.
Third, that it is not inherently bad to be selfish. Albert Einstein might well have failed to achieve much if he had had a more easy going nature. A self focus can create an intensity that can achieve immense deeds. Selfish in terms of possessiveness is a tricky one, however. It is harder to see a plus side. But Ifeel that I am not so tainted with this aspect.
This self-focus is described in me and others by a profile more than an absoluteness. Much as I am sensitive in many ways, but insensitive in others.
But the key point I want to make is that self focus, along with many other seemingly negative attributes (such as aggressiveness) all have their place. It is, in a way, an inherent feature of intense researchers or writers or inventors or actors.