Chapter Eight: Slow Torture of the Sleep Deprived Mind (~jinghan)

It’s Thursday 11am.

“Listen to the crackle of the beanbag beans,” I tell myself, “the mumble of a whispered conversation, the quite snore of someone else on the beanbags. Listen to the gentle hum of the air conditioning, the quiet buzz of the film being played through the headphones. Feel the pressure of the ground on your hip, feel the rush of your own breathing…”

I’m trying to exercise mindfulness: an awareness of one’s surroundings and senses. It’s supposed to relax the mind, and open your awareness, and tune your focus, but what my mind is really thinking is: “I’m so tired. I still have to finish my probability tutorial questions, I have to find some time to do my informatics workshop work some time… when do I have a sufficient break between classes to do that? Oh god. I’m so tired. What should I title my next blog? Slow fall of the sleep deprived swan? What? Why swan? Shutup! The word just came to me okay?? Fuck. I still have to go to my KLC lecture. I really don’t want to go. Maybe I should skip choir since I’m so tired. Should I eat lunch before my lecture? Slow descent of the sleep deprived swan? Better alliteration but too many syllables? What time is it? I should set my alarm so I don’t miss my lecture. My head hurts. My head hurts. Listen to the crackle of the beans. Listen. Listen! Mindfulness… Ragh. So tired.”

I’m curled up in foetal defeat, on the beanbags of the Rowden White Library. A slow ache is throbbing in my temple. They say sleep deprivation is a terrible form of torture. I think I understand now. I’ll do anything for you, just tell me what you want to know, just make my mind shut up and give me some sleep. It’s only half way through the day and three quarters through the week and here’s how I got here…

It’s Friday – sorry I mean: Saturday 12:30am and I should be sleeping, but instead I’m lying on my belly typing madly into my computer. I have to get up at 6am the next day, but it’s okay I’ll make up the sleep later, good blog ideas should not be wasted to tiredness, the mind should be used to it’s full advantage when it is full of inspiration. It’s 1:30am when I turn off my computer.

It’s Saturday 6:55am and I am late! I dress and eat in 10minutes. I’m attending the Kwong Lee Dow Young Scholars camp, and as one of the second-year leaders I’m determined to be cheerful and friendly and set a good example of leadership to the aspiring young first-years.

It’s Sunday 1am and with hiking boots on bare feet I groggily plod over to the shower block with my towel. Not matter how hard I tried, and how tired I was from the first day of the camp I still couldn’t get my mind to relax and sleep. Maybe a shower will help. A lone spider waddles into the shower cubical and pauses to drink from the condensation. I’m to tired to care about its lack of consideration for my privacy.

It’s Sunday 6am and I am making indeterminate vocal sounds as the other campers start to move about the cabin. I pull the sleeping bag hood over my face, but I know that I’ll have to roll out, get dress and ready for a day of good healthy physical activities.

It’s Sunday 3:30pm and I groggily wake up without opening my eyes to the rumble of the bus against my pillow. My muscles complain as I attempt to tilt my head. I discover that I had slept all the way through a toilet stop at Ararat and we are now at Beuford. Should I do my Complex Analysis assignment when I get home?

It’s 11pm Sunday and I am not doing my Complex Analysis assignment. Instead I am watching Conviction Kitchen on the channel seven website because I cannot bare the idea of missing an episode when they take down the web-stream tomorrow after the next episode is shown. It’s okay, one has to make sacrifices like this to enjoy life. Right?

It’s 11:30pm Monday and I am doing my complex analysis assignment after coming home from Book Club. I could have skipped book club, but my friend was going, I had read the book, and heck I needed something to change the rhythm of my mind from struggling over the Complex Analysis assignment during all my breaks between lectures. Besides I’m not tired enough to not be able to concentrate, I’ll feel good to get this done.

It’s 11:30pm Tuesday and I am talking to a friend online. I’ve been so busy trying to get things done and catch up on all the things I would have usually done during the weekend that I didn’t realise that I missed having time to reconnect with people until a spontaneous “hey, how are you?” sent as a facebook message triggered a conversation. Oops, I’d better get to bed, I have to get up as a decently early time tomorrow morning to provoke year 10 girls to be enthusiastic about science.

It’s 12pm Wednesday and I am ‘reading’ an article set for my breadth subject. What I’m really doing is letting the words wash over me as I eye the progress of the scroll bar down the side of the page. I take a ‘break’ to go watch Hungry Beast*. Maybe I should stop sacrificing my time to engage with life and try and get some more sleep, but it’s the first episode of season three and only half an hour. When I get back to my desk I discover that the author of the reading has used the word “culture” far too many times for my tired mind to make any sense of what he is saying anymore.

“Culture (in the sense of the arts) defines a quality of fine living (culture as civility) which is the task of political change to realise in culture (in the sense of social life) as a whole.”

Culture what?

It’s 9am Thursday and I’m starting to feel the effects of my careless expenditure of energy and enthusiasm. By 10am my head hurts and I’m having trouble concentrating despite how much I want to make the most of all my time. It’s a battle between the need for sleep and the need for study and both sides are losing.

By 12pm I’m engaging with class discussion only to discover that I’ve lost my chain of thought half way through a sentence and ending everything with an awkward “… and yeah…” before retreating into my seat as much as is physically possible while thinking “shut up Jinghan. You are too tired to say anything worthwhile and not off topic. Please please don’t say anything, even if you do hate those awkward silences after the teacher has asked something and no one is answering.”

It’s 5:30pm when I crawl home with a aching, scattered mind drained of self-esteem. Motivation is good. Enthusiasm is good. Not folding to petty excuses is good. Working hard is good. But this little Jinghan has completely toppled herself over with trying to be good.

“Slow down,” I tell myself for the first time in the week. I make myself a pot of hot, scented jasmine tea, and breath in the aromatic steam as I sip it down slowly. I let down the blinds. I put on my pyjamas. And I plug my favourite calming music into my ears. At first my mind is still struggling with the rush of thoughts that have not stopped all week. “Maybe ‘Slow Torture of the Sleep Deprived Mind’? That’s what this feels like. Gotta ditch the swan, I guess, as cool as unnecessarily poetic phrasing can be…” But by 6pm I have finally surrendered to fatigue and am to all extents and purposes unconscious to the world.

I guess I need to work on my ability to share my time. No more waging of war between study and sleep.

At last there is peace in my mind.

Or at least a ceasefire.

It’s a start.

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*if you enjoy quirky facts and the opinion of open-minded youths you will love Hungry Beast. Wednesday 9:30pm on ABC1 and Thursday 10:15pm on ABC2 or on iView on the internet.