The 27 Distinct Stages Of Falling Asleep At Night

Flickr, Franca Gimenez
Flickr, Franca Gimenez

1. Start to feel droopy and tired. Decide that you will definitely have no problem falling asleep tonight. Not you. Not at all.

2. Get on your laptop to check something in bed. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Realize it’s two hours later than you planned to go to bed. Shut off laptop. Close eyes.

3. Remember that thing that you were supposed to do this afternoon. Curse internally at yourself for not doing it. Set an alarm on your phone reminding you to do it tomorrow. Close eyes again.

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4. Shift your sleeping position into something more comfortable. Not that one. Shift again. Not that either. Try positioning yourself in every angle imaginable before eventually resigning to a night of total discomfort.

5. Realize that you are now approximately 70% more alert than you’ve been at any point in the day. Turn your light on because it’s obvious that you aren’t falling asleep any time soon.

6. Decide to be productive. Open your laptop and check your work email. Look at you, preparing for tomorrow. You’re such an adult.

7. Ooh what’s that link?

8. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Realize it’s now three hours later than you planned to go to bed. Shut off laptop. Close eyes.

9. Suddenly your bed is a boiling pit of lava. Take your covers off and flip over your pillow.

10. Mentally walk through your upcoming day at work. Plan where you can cut a few corners because you’re obviously going to be tired.

11. Now your bed is the arctic. Put half of the covers back on.

12. Calculate how many hours you’ll get if you fall asleep right now.

13. Panic.

14. Decide that you obviously aren’t getting to sleep anytime soon, so you might as well use the time to dwell on past mistakes and obsess over things you did wrong five + years ago.

15. Obsess yourself into a dark, dreary hole of self-loathing.

16. Wonder what’s new in porn.

17. Finally find a comfortable spot that it feels like you might get some sleep in. Start to drift off.

18. Hear a weird creaking sound from the hallway. Freak out.

19. Run through eight thousand scenarios of what could be making that noise, including but not limited to the plot of every horror movie you ever watched as a child.

20. Run through one or two plausible scenarios of what could be making that noise, including but not limited to the fact that your house is a hundred years old.

21. Watch three thousand vines to get your mind off ghosts.

22. Calculate the hours you have left until you need to wake up.

23. Panic.

24. Set your alarm clock for one hour later. Reason that you don’t need to eat breakfast tomorrow.

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25. Accept that you are never going to sleep again. Consider your new life as an insomniac, all the things you’ll get done in the nighttime hours when the rest of the world is asleep.

26. Wake up. It’s suddenly morning and you are exhausted. Why didn’t you go to bed earlier last night?

27. Vow to be in bed by 9pm tonight. Tonight you won’t have any problem falling asleep. Not you. Not at all. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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