Try Softer.

I didn’t sleep well last night.

I woke up around 1am and was wide awake. Worse than narrow awake. Better than being at a wake. Awake, with any modifier, is not the state one wants to be in when they’re trying to be asleep. [Or even…wide asleep.]

It could have been the extra Manhattan I had with Wiff to close out the night. Or the Pomeranian snoring in my ear. Or maybe it was the Mexican food. [I’ll know in an hour…] But whatever the reason, I was not asleep.

I tried to get back to sleep. Really hard. I tried meditating. I tried counting sheep. I tried hunting sheep. I tried apologizing to the sheep for counting and then hunting them. I tried holding my breath until I fainted. I thought about putting a pillow over my face and setting the snoring Pomeranian on top, but I’ve seen too many police procedurals to know how that ends. And I don’t want to die in a way the coroner chuckles about when he tells the investigating detective how I died.

Detective: “How’d this stiff expire?”
Coroner: “You’ll never guess.”
Detective: “Smothered by an overweight Pom?”
Coroner: “Uncanny! That’s why they pay you the big bucks!”
Detective: “Thanks to the $15 minimum wage my fry-flipping son makes more than me.”

That’s how those go, right?

Anyway, I tried really hard to get to sleep. And it’s the trying that was the problem. The harder I tried, the further I was from my goal. Because trying takes active thought. Trying takes action. Yes, even meditation, although relaxing, requires focus. And I’m pretty sure the last thing sleep wants is me chasing after it.

What if instead of trying, I let sleep come to me?

Or, better yet, what if I let go of the ideal of having a “perfect sleep” altogether and embraced my being awake?

So I opened up Notes on my iPhone and started writing jokes, some of which I plan to break out on the stand-up comedy show I’m hosting tonight. And, after I let the Muse say her piece, she retreated back to her weird little cave that all muses inhabit, and left me alone.

And just like that, sleep came.

If there’s a lesson for me here, it’s this: for most things in life, don’t try. And lay off the Mexican food before bed.