I have an intricate amount of things that go into my odd ritual of bedtime and that affect my relationship with sleep.

- I play an average of 30 minutes multi-player Battlefield 2/BF 2142/Call of Duty 4 or actually PvP on WoW before sleeping. The goal is to relax me, but depending on how I do, it sometimes just makes me really pissed off prior to bedtime.
- Usually one small glass of red wine is enjoyed by me at this time. Sometimes it’s chamomile tea.
- I sleep with one of those eye masks that make you look like some sort of diva; I’m extremely light sensitive. I actually go so far as to put black electrical tape over the LEDs on some of my electronics. Before I got the eye mask, I would usually just put a pillow over my face and gripe a lot.
- Pillows. Pillows are important. I have three pillows on my bed. One is one of those weird therapeutic contour pillows that offer all the comfort of granite for the first week of use. The second is one my grandmother handmade for my Dad when he was first born and that I stole from him when I was three - I have since refused to give it up. The third is just to not make my bed feel so empty (sad, but true).
- I always leave a full glass of water on my dresser, because I have a tendency to wake up dying of extreme thirst within two hours of drifting off. This happens regardless of how much water I consume throughout the day.
- I have to double check that the doors to my closet and drawers are completely closed before I get into bed. When I was in elementary school, I read some ridiculous fable that involved a ghost or ghoul or something that would eat children who left doors/windows/drawers etc open at night. The ritual stuck into adulthood - if I don’t do this, I can’t sleep.
- Sometimes I sleepwalk. I usually attempt to make a sandwich when this happens. The last time I know of this happening was about four to five years ago, when my brother happened to be around to witness it and make fun of me afterward. I’ve had one episode of sleep paralysis that scared the everliving crap out of me when I was 17. I don’t have any safeguards against either of these two things now n’ days, but around ages 10-15 (when the sleepwalking mostly occurred), I couldn’t go to sleep unless my room was completely free of clutter and potential hazards. I only include this information in my current list because I find it amusing, outside of that one instance of sleep paralysis.
- Relevant to this day, I still sometimes freak out and wake myself up right as I’m about to go to sleep because of that one damn occurrence. It was that scary.

I’m sure there are multitudes of other things I do sometimes before actually being able to go to sleep that I’m unaware of. There are strange exemptions to my usual inability to sleep if the above aren’t accomplished. Travel is a big one. Travel seems to trump my insomnia and my general feeling of restlessness if my routine of bedtime isn’t fulfilled for some reason. I don’t know why this is so, but I’m happy with it. I’d be a terrible house guest, otherwise.

Here is to travel. I need to sleep.