Reasons Why I Cannot Sleep
My therapist says I’m more tired today than she’s ever seen me. Here are some reasons my brain says I cannot sleep:
My boss might lose faith in my ability to manage projects. Something important might go wrong with my project (Inkhaven), and I am the only person on-call who has the context to fix it all. If I screw it up he might no longer be willing to give me big projects like this.
Annoying social drama. There was one the other day, that made me anxious and unable to relax until it was dealt with. I had just come out of a massage supposed to relax me, and yet I was immediately un-relaxed for a few hours.
I associate being in bed with checking Reddit/YouTube. Whoops. Perhaps I should have better spaces to do this, so that I never do it in bed? Alas, I live in a single room with a bed and a desk, this is my private space. I have a hard time just going to sleep in bed.
There are 50-60 people on campus who I am responsible for. When people are around they ask you questions and to solve their problems. All. The. Time. Being seen is an invitation for you to solve a problem. Eye contact is an invitation for you to solve a problem. Saying “hi” is an invitation for you to solve a problem. (This is my job and normally I am happy to do it, but it’s hard to turn it off.)
There are many Slack messages waiting for me. I guess this is on me for having a habit of hitting slack inbox-zero and an org philosophy of Slack Maximilism.
I said I’d sing a song in the open mic tonight. Alas, I was looking forward to that. It’s my favorite song I know. Well, I’ve had to cancel.
My mum wants to catch up with me. I did fly her half way across the world to be here, so that’s understandable. Fortunately I am keeping her here for 2 months so it’s fine to say no sometimes.
I’m having a depressive spiral. Given my lack of sleep, everything else in my life looks worse and like a problem I cannot overcome and will feel shame for failing at. It helps to remember that I feel this way substantially because I’m tired and not because the things are as bad as they seem. Though I am indeed pulling to mind the worst issues that I am facing, and also some of my insecurities being exposed/tested.
Because I need to make plans for a few specific people who are leaving Inkhaven tomorrow. Two residents will be leaving for Thanksgiving and not returning; and one contributing writer will leave in the morning. I want to make sure that the residents have a nice sendoff, and that the contributing writers’ time is well-spent.
Because I have to write a blogpost else I have failed out of Inkhaven. I am probably the person at Inkhaven with the most work to do during Inkhaven, but it isn’t good for the leader of Inkhaven to fail the daily blogging challenge, so he should figure out a nice short post to write that he can publish to keep up with the challenge.
From the inside, Inkhaven feels like a project in its tenth year. Almost everything runs smoothly. Maybe lunch is 15 minutes late now and then and a long buffet line forms, but that’s about it. Surprise guests drift through, everyone from a masseur to Dwarkesh, and new collaborating writers rotate in and out like clockwork. First rate experience.
I am far away (Aus) and probably have a distorted view of Inkhaven. Though, I probably should have been more vocal about how grateful I am, that it is a thing that is happening. I did draft a long comment to the original Inkhaven announcement. Where I gushed about my excitement, and was cheering on the people of the Lightcone. But, I felt embarrassed being so open about my enthusiasm, and ultimately deleted the draft. Oops!
I’ll make up for this mistake a little, by saying, thank you for running Inkhaven, Ben. I think this is a good thing for the world, and it seems like a hard project to organize. It is quite understandable that you’d be feeling like shit, with so much on your plate.
Inkhaven has already had positive knock-on effects in the community. Having participated in the Half-Haven discord for the past two months, I have written ~28 blog posts as of today, and am on track to complete the 30 posts in 2 months goal. I think I am a better writer, because of this, and Half-Haven is something that wouldn’t have happened without Inkhaven, inspiring the idea.
I am grateful to you, and your project. Good luck.
For the Blogosphere!
Wait, is that why it’s called Halfhaven???
For what it’s worth, Inkhaven seems awesome—among the best things that Lightcone has done recently, I think. I regret that I’m not participating.
Man that’s stressful. I hope you get to rest better soon, maybe just sleeping through one whole day like a hibernating bear. Making happy and content sleeping bear sounds. Which I guess bears don’t make if they’re hibernating. But I digress.
It’s been cool to read many of the Inkhaven posts, so I’m happy that you’ve been organizing it!
I was somewhat surprised you didn’t mention bad / autumn weather in your post as a potential contributing factor to depression or sleep problems at this time of year, but apparently California is a lot warmer and sunnier right now than it is here in Germany.
The weather during Inkhaven was oppressively nice by comparison to most places. It didn’t even start getting meaningfully cold until the end of November.
I’m sorry to hear about the social drama and the depressive spiral both. I can’t know how you feel but I’ve been nearby, at least. For my part, I very nearly did Inkhaven, and I’m very glad that it happened. From all accounts and everything I’ve observed, you did an incredible job organizing it, you were probably majorly responsible for most of the weird wonderful things I glimpsed that happened within it, and I moderately strongly regret not having taken part. Cheers!