I’m almost done with Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Secret of Secrets. The tagline on the front cover: “Author of The Da Vinci Code” was a good add, because that romp through Europe was written over twenty years ago. This romp, alas, is not really much of one. The story ping-pongs relentlessly between explanation and action – making for restless reading – but at least the premise is intriguing. What if the human conscience could operate outside of the human body? What if “you” could exist in both a spiritual and a physical form at the same time? Well, maybe I do, at least when I’m trying to fall asleep.
When you get to be my age – somewhere between “middle” and “senior” – you wake up at least once a night. Not for an outdoor stroll under the stars and not for a midnight snack. You wake up “to take care of business”. It’s an inevitable phenomenon as we get older, especially for us guys. And when I stumble out of the bathroom I also grab a quick drink of water. That one-two punch wakes me up, at least enough to get the gears turning and thoughts churning. Getting back to sleep can be a real challenge. There are nights I log many minutes memorizing the look of our bedroom ceiling.
Counting sheep has never been my thing, nor the “white noise” of those bedside appliances, but some new strategies have been an interesting experiment. The first is known as cognitive shuffling. It’s word play, where you take the letters of a word and spin off new words on each letter for a few seconds. I start with “piano” (my Wordle starter!) and then go “pepper, portray, people, ponder”, “illuminate, inch, icicle, ignite”, and so on. What does this do? It puts the mind in a random state, where you can’t concentrate on stressors like paying bills or fixing stuff.
The next sleep strategy is called “sensory grounding”, which means coming up with lists of things you can smell, touch, taste, hear, and see. It’s kind of like cognitive shuffling so I’ve never given it a try. Nor have I tried the breathing techniques, the calming playlists, or getting out of bed and writing down my thoughts on paper (to “release them from my mind”). All of those seem like a lot of effort just to fall asleep again.
Finally though, there’s a technique called “mental walk-throughs”. This one is more fun than word games and works pretty well for me. Think of somewhere you’ve been, preferably a long time ago. Maybe the neighborhood you grew up in, a house you lived in, or a store you enjoyed spending time in. Now take a virtual walk through one of those (and here’s where I sense my mind separating from my body). Look in several directions to see what surrounds you. Think about how you feel as you’re taking it all in. Trust me, it’s nostalgic, it’s calming, and it’s calming enough to put you back to sleep.
I read somewhere that The Secret of Secrets is already being made into a movie. That was fast. The ink hasn’t even dried on the critic’s reviews, but I guess having the The Da Vinci Code in your back pocket promises another profitable venture. Maybe I’ll buy a ticket and go see the show. It’d be another effective strategy to help me fall asleep.
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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #5
(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)
LEGO decided I needed a big helping of humility this week. Bag 9 – of 15 bags of pieces – brought me to my knees in one heart-pounding moment. Just as I was cruising to the final steps of the build (in a brisk forty-five minutes), my pulse went into overdrive as I realized the module I’d just constructed wouldn’t attach to its rightful place on the fountain. It just wouldn’t click in. In the land of LEGO this is very bad news. You might as well unfurl a big banner saying: Start over, Dave.
If you’ve built IKEA furniture, you know those do-it-yourself sets are engineering marvels. Everything goes together perfectly; not a piece out of place. So it is with LEGO. If one part of the model doesn’t “click” comfortably with another, you’ve done something seriously wrong and that, my friends, summarizes today’s build in a nutshell. The pile of parts above resulted in the module you see below… only it’s wrong… just slightly off from the way it’s supposed to look. My penalty: disassemble all those pieces back to the first step to figure out where I’d gone astray.
Just like the second time through Antonio Salieri’s Sinfonia in D Major, I took another forty-five minutes to reconstruct what I’d already built. The scene at my desk was an interesting disharmony of orchestral beauty, pinched fingers, and nasty thoughts. Thankfully (and with no surprise), once I got the build exactly as it was supposed to be, everything clicked together the way you see it here.
Bag 10 had to be laughing at me from inside the box. Bag 10 was scheduled to be opened and completed along with Bag 9 today Then it watched me fumble the football early on in the build. Yo, Bag 10, why didn’t you say anything? You’re a mean one (just like Mr. Grinch) but “I’ll get you my pretty”. Your time is coming… er, just next week instead of this one.
Running build time: 4 hrs. 33 min.
Total leftover pieces: 25
Some content sourced from the CNN Health article, “If worries keep you from falling back asleep, experts know what to try”.
Life In A Word 