Last night I got a somewhat late bedtime to begin with, certainly for a weeknight. So it was a little annoying that after I went to bed and relaxed just about enough to go to sleep, there was this noise keeping me up. Hard to describe, somewhere between a hum and rustling. Except soon I realized something: It wasn't keeping me up exactly. I was somewhere between wakefulness and sleep.
A hypnagogic state, that is.
The sound could have been entirely within my head or it could have been hypersensitivity to the fridge humming. Either way, I woke myself up and it stopped. So then I could actually get to sleep.
It's kind of an unsettling experience. yes. But it's also kind of cool. I was fortunate in not undergoing anything potentially traumatic like sleep paralysis. Hypnagogia complements my writerly side as well.
2 comments:
Going to bed and not going to sleep within what seems to be a reasonable amount of time is indeed irritating. Although I won't be kept awake by hearing something, unless it's student party night outside on the street, it's not unusual for me to experience that state once in every week or so. I've noticed that when it happens I've retired before I'm truly tired. It can also happen when one is overly tired. Seems to be a bit of a fine balance there.
Kind of a Goldilocks style situation when you think about it. The rest of the body is constantly regenerating cells, albeit too subtly for us to notice. I wonder if sometimes the brain gets disoriented trying to catch up. Just a thought.
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