Sleep Deprived

I have been struggling to sleep again. I hate it when this happens.

Part of the trouble is my caffeine addiction. You see, I wake up in the mornings feeling tired and worn out. By mid-afternoon, I feel exhausted. What occasionally happens at this point is that I have a nap, but regardless of whether I do or not, I end up feeling lethargic by late afternoon, and find myself needing caffeine to get my through the rest of the day. Coffee isn't my fix (though I do have a cup every now and then). Coke sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. My real addiction is Red Bull. At least one and at least three times a week. And then I can stay awake, stay focussed, stay in a happy mood for the rest of the evening rather than reverting into a slum where I won't talk and will just sit there being miserable until Grant asks me what is wrong, when I will respond that it is nothing but me being tired. Red Bull for the win!

But then the trouble comes in when I want to go to sleep. Yes, Red Bull keeps me awake and happy and lively when I want to be, but it also keeps my mind working even when I want to shut it down completely. I lie in bed, waking Grant up with my constant rolling around and sighs of frustration, with my mind jumping from subject to subject.
I need to book flights to Johannesburg.
I need to find accomodation in Johannesburg,
I need to make sure that the dress is ready on time.
I wonder if I can take photos at the wedding.
I should be taking more photos.
When was the last time that I took a photo?
I need to get more photography gigs.
I need to get my website up and running.
I need to write another blogpost.
I need to write another chapter of my book.
What will I write for the book?
What happened on this day last year?
You see... it is utter nuttiness. And these were just some of the subjects that were floating through my mind two nights ago when I literally rolled around for over two hours unable to fall asleep.

Now, you might say that the solution is simple enough - stop drinking Red Bull or, if I need to drink it, drink it earlier in the day so that my sleep isn't affected. That would probably be the smart thing to do, but as I said, my caffeine addiction is only a part of my sleeping woes. Even on days when I have had no caffeine - zero, zip, none - I often struggle to sleep. Sometimes it is because my mind is just on overdrive, sometimes it's because the things that my mind conjures up are either insanely weird (cue the semi-dream of me flying around on my mount from WoW taking photographs of my goddaughter) or just plain scary (cue the semi-dream of people breaking into my house on a nightly basis and not only taking all of my stuff, but breaking the things that they didn't take eg. my camera lenses.)

I know that many people believe that dreams have meanings, and the meanings behind my dreams are not hard to realise. I am obsessive. I get into a habit of doing something, and I become obsessive about that habit. Take photography, for example. I enjoy taking photos, but at some point photography became a giant part of my life, so much so that I eat, drink and sleep photography. At one stage back when I was in high school and didn't have a particularly advanced computer, I became obsessed with minesweeper, and my dreams consisted of clicking little grey buttons and praying that a bomb didn't blow me up when I clicked it. You see, whatever my hobby of the moment is, my dreams tend to take that on, but to the extreme. To the point where the hobby isn't fun anymore, purely because the stress that comes with it (and yes, even the funnest hobbies can be stressful sometimes) seeps into my dreams making it difficult for me to sleep.

So, my question for you today is this: How do you get to sleep when your mind is driving you nuts?

Theft

Was that down before? I stare at the blind through the closed window. It wasn't yesterday. Does that mean that Kim is back?
I open the electric gate that borders our house and hers and step through to find her side gate wide open. Something isn't right.
"Grant," I shout, running back into my own house. "Can you come with me?"
"To feed the cat? You can't do it yourself?"
"The gate is open."
It doesn't take much more convincing than that. Grant gets up from his seat, his father following, and together we go next door. Once we are through the side gate, our worst fears are confirmed. With the car not in the driveway, there's no way that Kim has come back from her holiday early. More open gates greet us, all with their locks missing, and splinters are scattered on the floor around the front door. We open it carefully, not knowing what we will find inside - they could still be there for all we know. But, as we step into the house, it's obvious that it has been abandoned - clothes litter what was once a neat lounge; cupboard doors are flung open, the cupboards themselves empty; the couches, empty of cushions, are covered in bits and pieces that have been scavenged from the house: empty cellphone boxes, more clothes, a small TV and a candelabra are scattered between numerous other items.
"Crap," I whispered as we glanced at a life of belongings strewn across the house without a thought for their owner. A doll torn apart upstairs, closets stripped bare, a fridge emptied and left wide open. This isn't what I would want to come home to.
"What do we do?" I am frozen, not wanting to move, not wanting to touch anything in case I destroy evidence, smudge fingerprints. I take out my cellphone, but realise that I don't even have Kim's number.
"Should we phone the police," Grant asks, turning to his dad - the two of them keeping their heads far better than I can.
Moments later, the cops arrive and start asking questions.
"Who are you?"
"Why are you here?"
"Where is the owner?"
"When did you arrive?"
I answer them one by one, trying to explain as much as I can, but there are questions that I can't answer. I cannot tell them what is missing, I cannot tell them whether the alarm works and I cannot tell them exactly what is out of place. Some things are obvious - the burgular bars hanging off the windows don't exactly scream safety - and other things are highly suspicious - the pitchfork with its bent prongs lying in the grass beside the window seems to scream "look at me!"
After my interrogation is over, once the fingerprinters have been and gone, once the landlady has been dealt with, the alarm has been set and the house has been locked up as well as we can manage, we head back to our side of the house, separated only by a garage door and a wall, and return to normalcy. I can't explain why, but our side of the wall just seems safer, as though nothing can touch us. And yet, as I drift off to sleep, my dreams are permeated with images of robbers and thieves, taking my stuff and destroying my piece of mind.