It’s 430am in San Francisco (well actually Foster City) and I am awake. I think I dozed off for 15 minutes around 1am, but that was then, and this is now.  I did debate about taking some of my trusted Advil PM a couple of hours ago, but I think I missed my chance.  And if I take some now, it’d be 6 before I fall asleep and will probably wake up by noon and there goes the rest of the day.  But this trip was supposed to be a vacation, where I would rest and recover and just veg, but I kind of wanted to do most of that awake and enjoying my soap operas, Vegas reruns, Target shopping runs and just inhale the California air.

So what do you do when you can’t sleep? It’s important not to panic.  Panicking will just make it harder to fall asleep.  As an experienced insomniac, my attitude is, I’ll sleep when I sleep.  And so, I already have my tried and tested things to do to pass the time till I fall asleep.  (Though most people might say, after reading this, no wonder she can’t sleep!)

1. You watch TV.  Or in my case, you watch the shows and movies that you saved on your computer’s hard drive.  I had about 50 episodes of whole bunch of shows to catch up on, not to mention the Inside the Clubhouse episodes about the San Francisco Giants that my brother DVR’d for me before I arrived.
2. You google.  Google what? Whatever comes to mind.  Sometimes I look for recipes I want to try.  Sometimes I look up actors and see what they’re up to.  Other times, I look for possible variations on the haircut that I’ve been sporting for the last year or so.
3. You shop or rather you cart.  You don’t have to actually buy anything, you just pick and choose and put them in your shopping cart.  Though since I’m here, I probably will end up buying them and, more often that not, returning them.
4. You work.  Even if things aren’t due for a few days, if you’re awake and have nothing much to do, then just get them out of the way.  At the very least, you can get the first draft out and just review and revise when the due date is closer.
5. You eat.  This is probably the worst thing you can do.  (my mom might argue and say it’s #3).  We used to keep snacks in our room, but I’ve tried to avoid that and these days, I just have a glass of water in my room.  The good thing here is that it’s too cold to bother going downstairs just for some potato chips.
6. You clean.  No not housecleaning.  I just clean my files.  I back-up, I delete, I rearrange files, I create folders.  I sometimes even revise the names of files so that they appear more organized (this sometimes means changing upper case to lower case and vise versa)
7. You play games.  Words with Friends, Scramble with Friends, SongPop, Draw Something, or my latest obsession, Spider Solitaire.
8. You read.  I have about 90 ebooks on my iPad that I have yet to read, plus subscriptions to about 6 magazines.  I don’t think I have to worry about running out of things to read.
9. You make lists.  Of what to wear, what to do. Of what you need to do. Of what lists you have to make.  Of what to pack for that next trip. Of what to buy, of whatever you might want to list.  Of what to do when you can’t sleep.
10. You blog.  About whatever you can think of, like maybe…what to do when you can’t sleep.

Ok now it’s 5am, and I am still wide awake.  I think this means we go back to #1 and see what happens….