The Cure For Insomnia

Updated 9/1/2011

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Somewhere around midnight or a little thereafter I send a tweet out that says “Good Evening Twitter Vampires.”  Most of the time I receive a handful of responses from people across the globe. I am old enough to remember when it cost serious money to make long distance telephone calls, let alone talk to someone overseas. Yet most nights I finish up my evening with a short chat with people in Australia, England and Israel. Not to mention the few on the East Coast who are just waking up and those on the West who like me are burning the candle at both ends.

Last week someone asked me why I keep the hours that I do. They wanted to know if I was up because of work or if I suffer from insomnia. The answer is that there have been a number of times where work responsibilities have required me to adjust my hours. Most of the time that is because I have an early morning conference call to attend. Did I mention that those are usually 8 AM EST, or 5 AM my time. Good times I tell you.

But I wouldn’t suggest that I am up at odd hours because of insomnia either. I tend not to need as much sleep as other people or maybe I have just trained myself to stay awake. It is hard to say. What I do know for certain is that I am a natural night owl. I like those late hours. There is something magical after midnight. During my college days I was one of the first people to hear about bad breakups. Not because I was a trained therapist but my friends knew that it was generally safe to call me at 3 am.

Those days are long ago and now that I have become Superdad I have children who think that if the sun is up it is time for all to be awake. Consequently I have tried to adjust my hours somewhat. Even though I don’t need a lot of sleep I can’t live on 4 hours for months at a time anymore. Add a big heaping dose of stress and my sleep has been a bit more strained than normal. I have had nightmares about waking up in cleveland or being forced to move into an igloo in Buffalo.

Fortunately neither has happened and if I have anything to say about it neither will.  Still, I have found my sleep to be less satisfactory than usual and had been wondering what I could do about it.

The Universe Taps Me On The Shoulder

I am beginning to wonder if perhaps there is reason for me to take the idea of signs more seriously. Not stop signs, but those little moments when the universe taps you on the shoulder. The reason being that I was contacted by the fine folks at Sleep Number and asked if I wanted to help them out. The deal was that I would get to create my own custom sleep number pillow to review and that as a bonus I could give one away to one of my lucky readers.

I said yes and selected the Memory Foam outer comfort with the memory foam contour inner support and the in balance protector. (Dear FTC, the previous paragraph is what we call disclosure.

My pillow came last week and I am have been very pleased with it. The obvious question is have I slept better than I did with my old pillow. The answer is yes. I have been trying to figure out if the pillow is the reason or if it has been more of a placebo effect. I am not sure how to answer that question. I truly like the pillow and find it to be quite comfortable so I think that it has to be part of it. If nothing else I am confident in recommending that you enter the giveaway and try to win one for yourself. I don’t think that you can go wrong with it.

Here is what you need to do. Click on this link and enter all of the information. Please be certain to fill in the referring blog info too. It is that easy, so much so that I’ll even give you the link one more time.

P.S. As I was writing this post I received word that a big deal that I had been working on has come through. Is the universe sending me signs, tapping me on the shoulder or just giving me a well-deserved break? I don’t know. But I do know that I am looking forward to enjoying a little shut eye on my new pillow.

• Saved: Sleep Number