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I also have largely abandoned attempts to "force" myself to sleep after years of insomnia. It results in some tired days, which in turn has resulted in some problems with consuming too much caffeine. But it's largely better for my mental health, I think, to simply get up and find some way to occupy myself until I actually feel tired. The alternative, trying to force myself to sleep when I don't feel tired, with mounting anxiety about getting too little sleep, simply doesn't have any upside.

Evolutionarily, insomnia makes sense in the context of a tribe, where it's useful to have people up and about, watching for danger. But in the modern day with synchronized workplaces, we've seemingly decided that not waking up early verges on a moral failing. "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise," is just the beginning. Showing up late to work is looked down upon, but staying at work late is underappreciated, in my experience. Being on the east coast is a surprising benefit when working with West Coast clients because it creates the impression that I'm getting more done simply because of time zones. There's something deeply ingrained in US culture going on here that I'm not sure I understand the full extent of.

I learned early not to fight my insomnia. I was always more tired if I tried to sleep instead of doing something else.

What works for me is reading low stakes fiction. Smutty fairy fantasy novels and things like that. They require zero real thought, and are relaxing enough to not stress my mind. Combine that with a massive bean bag chair full of latex rounds instead of regular stuffing.

Also, I've noticed a difference at my employer from your experience. The people who stay late (but also come in late) are promoted, whereas the early risers like myself are chastised for leaving early.

I'm still tired seasonally when the insomnia really flares up, but I'm not the walking dead anymore. And no psychotic breaks for a decade.

> The people who stay late (but also come in late) are promoted, whereas the early risers like myself are chastised for leaving early.

I had one boss who got fed up with the early risers like me apparently bunking off early, so he instituted signing in and out... and discovered that we worked longer hours than the late arrivals, in some cases a lot longer. The experiment was discontinued after a few weeks.

I suffered insomnia for many years when working days, it seems I'm just a night owl and I've learned that working the night shift works best for me, midnight - 8am local time seems to be the sweet spot for me, in bed before noon, up for a late dinner and a night with family before they're all off to sleep while I work the night away in peaceful quiet... and no more insomnia, with black-out curtains in the bedroom and a running fan I no longer have trouble sleeping...
After investigating my own sleep patterns and from what I've learned taking, not taking, and then occasionally targetedly taking melatonin. I think the night waking/night creativity could be a late peak of melatonin above some threshold level which causes agitation, heightened feelings, etc. as described in the article.
I've definitely experienced this too. If I time melatonin wrong and don't get to rest right after taking it, I get more anxious and almost feel the same as late into a sleepness night.
>Most nights, I woke between 2am and 4am, tossed and turned for an hour

It's interesting that today this is very quickly framed as pathological, but in a lot of cultures biphasic sleep actually used to be common. A lot of preindustrial English language literature for example makes explicit references to "two sleeps". Many people used to sleep from around 9-11 pm, then engaged in various activities for one or two hours and continued to sleep. It kind of blew my mind when I heard about it the first time because of how completely this seems to have vanished, not just the practice itself but also discussion about it.

I think for people stressing a lot about sleep it's probably worth taking into account just how artificial the whole factory-job era on the clock sleep schedule is.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieva...

I don't know where the line is between night wakings being physiological or pathological/disorder since we have so much artificial interference nowadays. But, unless I overlooked, no where in the article does the author mention getting a sleep test in lab or at home for apneas, etc. I just find that a little odd.
It's interesting to compares this approach - a long fight against insomnia, then falling back to philosophy and contemplation - to the approaches of most older women I've known. A sense of the latter -

If the prospects seem good, trying getting back to sleep for 10 minutes. If that doesn't work, there's always work to do - so get up, start a load of laundry, and catch up on some things while it runs. Consider making a hole in your schedule, so you could get a couple hours sleep after the laundry's done, or an afternoon nap - but it that wouldn't work - well, such is life.

(Yes, I'm an old geezer. And back in the day, there were quite a few farms in my family.)

how do you do that and have to make a living?