Occasionally I suffer with crazy long bouts of insomnia. No matter how exhausted I am during the day by the time bedtime rolls around I can't fall asleep without help. My brain just won't shut off. I think of all the things I should be doing at that moment even if they are things I couldn't possibly do at midnight (like vacuum or plant flower seeds). Bedtime is the time of day that I am the most motivated to workout. And it's the time where scenes and lines for my current WIP and new ideas seem to bombard me. It is the most frustrating thing in the world because I have a day job that I cannot miss and I cannot be too tired for.
I've been looking for tips on how to shut my brain off at night. I've got a prescription from my doctor for a medicinal solution, but that's not always an option since I sometimes don't realize it's going to be "one of those nights" until well after my eleven o'clock drug cutoff (if I take them any later, then I'm near useless at work the next day and I might as well have not taken it and not gotten any sleep). One thing that's worked for me lately has been thinking about the most mundane thing I can come up with and repeating it over and over. Kind of like counting sheep, but without the change of the numbers.
I wish I had the luxury to stay up and work on things as late as my brain wants me to, but my body and my job won't let me. I'm sure that I'm probably missing amazing ideas so that I could get a decent night's rest. Perhaps I'll get lucky and on my next vacation I'll have one of these insomnia weeks and for the first time since they started I won't suffer.
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