A tip for when you can't fall asleep.

Early on in the pandemic, probably sometime in April, I started to have a terrible time falling asleep. If my memory is right, it was in that time period where I was starting to realize that I might not get back into my classroom that school year. I was worried about my students, miserable from the frustrations of remote teaching, and feeling very far away from my family.

I tried all sorts of things to get myself to sleep. I put screens away earlier, meditated, took evening showers to wind down, and even tried CBD. But no matter what, when I actually turned the lights out and tried to sleep, my chattering mind would come roaring back to life, not wanting to let me rest when there was so much in the world to worry about!

What finally did the trick?

I popped my AirPods in, set the sleep timer on my library’s audiobook player, and began listening to audiobooks at bedtime. There was enough of a distraction to pull my mind out of its anxious spiral, and I purposely chose calm, cozy books to listen to at bedtime. It sort of made me feel like a little kid being put to bed, but it worked.

I was doing this a lot in the spring, but then I eventually got into a better routine and started sleeping better. (For what it’s worth, waking up at the same time each morning & making it a priority to move my body every single day made a huge difference in how I slept.) I hadn’t needed to put myself to bed via audiobook for a long time, probably months, until this week.

Last night, I could not fall asleep. I don’t know what it was, but I was tossing & turning long past midnight, in a way that hadn’t happened since those early pandemic days. After meditating only made me more agitated, and I was worried my fidgeting would wake Sean, I finally remembered the audiobook trick. It worked like a charm!