The following comments come from Item 27, The SkiING Item

From response 15.  The God of Silence (vidar) mentioned:

...I only get one hour of sleep a night.  What's the point in going
 to bed.  Better yet, what's the point of sleeping if I can only get an
 hour?

From response 16.  Rane Curl (rcurl) replied with:

 Sounds like a good starting point for a sleepING item. I don't know, vidar,
 what is the point? Perhaps your brain only needs an hour to catch up on
 its record keeping and filing. 

I think Rane is right.  It's high time for a sleepING item.  It's 2:32 AM,
and I can't sleep.  It's two hot, and I'm bothered by hay fever, or, as
my doctor says, "Allergic Rhinitis."  But then, he makes a lot of money to
use big words.
 

60 responses total.

I bicycled about 40 miles and did about two hours of yard
work in yesterday's humidity, so I was in no shape to stay up late.
In fact, I crawled onto a futon in my basement around 9:30 pm and
promptly fell asleep.

I'm an early to bed, early to rise kind of person and need 7-8 hours
of sleep.

  I too, could not sleep so I just played the hell out of my nintendo and
kept my cool rag nearby. I fell asleep at 6am and slept until 1. 
I really need 7 to 10 hours and cannot sleep when it is this humid.
there should be laws against high humidity.

I've recently decreased my sleep time from ca. 7 hours to 5+, by staying
up later. I seem to need the "quiet time" after the family has retired,
to read, compute, grex, etc (but no machine tools...). I do tend to doze
off during the day, though. I probably have what would be called a 
"sleep disorder". For heat and humidity, we use a fan - until it gets
like today, when the central air goes on (first time in 1993, though).

I've just decreased my sleeping time from 1 hour to about 1/2 an hour.
My body just doesn't like sleep, I guess.

You should contact a sleep laboratory, and volunteer for their studies.
I have never heard of anyone getting by on as little as 1 hour of sleep
a day.

Most people who think they're only sleeping as little as 1 hr a day are
sleeping more.

Think?  I KNOW I'm only sleeping 1 hr. a day.  I look at the clock when I go
to sleep and when I wake up only an hr. has passed.

Do you check the calendar too?

I couldn't sleep very well last night, I didn't get to bed until two am, and
couldn't get to sleep until four.  Then, I woke up around eight and couldn't
get back to sleep.  I'm not feeling too tired, though, for some reason.  My
sleep lately has been about nine or ten hours, because it is vacation, but
during the school year, I usually get by on ablut six and a half.

Re #8: Yep.

Last night I didn't sleep at all.  My body managed somehow to store the
information while I was consious.  I think pretty soon I'm going to turn into a
 Living Zombie, unlike the undead, but still a little mindless.

Don't drive.

Maybe you are asleep when you are awake.

Since here we are with a sleepING item, I'd like to hear if folk have
particular techniques for getting to sleep, when anxiety, worry, coffee,
etc interfer? The only intentional technique that I have found to work
for me, is to use the word "sleep" as a mantra. I suppose I could use
the word "sheep", but that doesn't have much to do with sleep, except
apocryphally. Perhaps I am using a form of self-suggestion.

How about an muscular person, punching me in the head?  That's about the only
thing that would work for me.  Asleep while I'm awake?  I don't think that's
possible.  
ould work for me.  Asleep while I'm awake?  I don't think that's

vidar must've nodded off there.  :)

No, I hit ^D on the wrong line.  I was perfectly awake.  Anyway the last
word would have been "possible."  

I've found a couple of methods to help me sleep, on the rare occasions that I
actually *want* to indulge in such a wasteful activity. <g>
 
The first is a relaxation technique I learned some years ago - starting with
your toes, slowly tense and relax, then do the same with the feet, then with
the feet and the calves, etc., until you've involved your entire body with the
tense/relax routine.  Another thing I used to help me sleep involved
visualisation while listening to the radio set at a low volume - picture
something similar to a player piano scroll in your mind, with the words to
whatever song that happens to be on the radio at the time on it.  I found it
to be a good mental exercise, and it got my mind off of whatever was helping
keep me awake.

We were told about this while my wife and I were going to one of those
silly classes you go to when your expecting your first child.  My wife
uses it quite a bi

I actually got 13 hours of sleep last night.  Help me!  I've wasted 13 hours
of my life!  How do I get it back?!

Bummer dude!  I like to sleep.  It gives my mind time to exercise.

I love to sleep!  I could, and sometimes do, sleep 16 hours at a time.
It's a "good" way to deal with depression, with boredom, and with being
tired.  Nothing feels as sensuous and curling into a bed that knows
my contours, feeling clean, cool sheets wrapped around me and a gentle
breeze from an open window or fan caressing my face--and to feel
sleep come and touch me and relax me...

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmm -- I think I'll go take a nap.

Geez, you make that sound wonderful!

16 hours of sleep!  What an utter waste of time.  I find if I get much over 
eight hours I never wake up.  I may feel better rested than if I had gotten
seven hours, or six hours or something, but I seem to be more productive
on fewer hours.  Oh well, its summer... Who needs to be productive.

Re #20:  13 hours of sleep is not 13 hours of time wasted.  Just because
you're not *conscious* of being productive doesn't mean you're not being
productive.  Things happen during sleep that are essential to our
functioning while awake.  A great deal of problem-solving takes place
during sleep.

I prefer to sleep on only one night out of the week, and usually that's
saturday.  I could be doing more fun things than sleeping at night, for
example: wasting my money at Pinball Pete's.  Or Partying with my friends. 
With a lifespan as short as mine, sleep IS a waste of time.  Those things that
happen when you're asleep, happen to me sometime while I'm awake.

So why are you going to die on Aug. 4, 1998 at 6pm?

Because that's when the other guy, plunges his broad sword through my heart.
And afterwards, Tom Biancalana is responsible for igniting the drakkar.

That proves it.  You are asleep when you are awake.

when I have difficulty sleeping, I meditate. . then it's morning.

But, did you sleep?

Answer: Yes, Meditation is a form of sleep known as a trance.  While 
meditating your body relaxes and fills with energy, and then you wake up; 
refreshed.

Isn't that "recharged"?

I guess so.

I still don't understnd how it's possible to be asleep while you are awake.
I meditate, but I call that sleep.

No, when I meditate, I am awake.  When I am sleeping, I am asleep.  The two
states are different and they register differently on an eeg. Sometimes
I use meditation to recharge my energy.  Other times I use it to relax my
mind so that I can fall alseep.

Well, Excuse me for living.  I use meditation when I really feel the urge to
kill.  Which isn't very often but it happens, I have this weird obssesion with 
trying to kill anyone who so much as punches me, Once.  I came real close one,
the dude had ten seconds of life left had I continued strangling him.

Well, enough about me pyschopathic life.  Let's get back to the orignal topic.

I believe I heard that sleep is our natural state.  We're only able to wake up
and actually do anything because of some switch in our brain to override the
sleeping state.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss