The Best Sleep Resolution I’ll Make in 2022

I was recently asked by one of our lead programmers, Brian, what I’m most excited about for the year 2022. The simple answer is: I’m looking forward to sleeping well.

Why am I not excited for 2022? (or this week, or tomorrow, or next year) Because, for as long as I can remember, I have gotten less than six hours of sleep a night. Which means I’m just three years away from waking up hungover. I’m an engineer, which means I work around some very bright people. I don’t have the excuse of being immune to general burnout anymore, and, as much as I’d like to, I can’t keep blaming snoring or my fiancé for my chronic lack of sleep.

As I know all too well, the New Year’s resolution to get more sleep often fades away by February. I’m frequently left uninspired by the lack of change in my health. I frequently don’t feel like I can change something about myself so profound as how much I sleep.

Furthermore, I’m lucky to have a spouse who is willing to try new things, and we’ve tried countless methods to get me to sleep better. We tried a weighted blanket, earplugs, the “Halo” (and many others) series of pillows, more sleep-specific pillowcases, and multiple sleep trackers. None of it has worked. The few things that have improved my sleep have been simple, non-surgical. I took a diuretic about a year ago. I found I wasn’t sleeping for six hours, but instead was catching a few cat naps during the day. Likewise, I talked to my doctor about it, and he told me it was okay if I felt more awake during the day than I was when I went to bed. It worked, for me.

As soon as I take that pill, I feel more focused and less sluggish than when I went to bed the night before. If I’m not taking a pill, I’ll see that I fall asleep just fine, but I wake up somewhere around 2 am to a mild to a moderately horrible case of sleep apnea. I find myself waking up so often that I will take a second pill, then sometimes a third, just to get back to sleep. I get up feeling exhausted, but I take a nap in the afternoon and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Likewise, I’ve still found that, regularly, I’m getting less than 6 hours of sleep a night. This is not healthy.

This lack of sleep leads to me falling asleep during conversations at meetings and talking to myself in my head while I’m falling asleep. The back pain I get from sleeping on my back has made me take to sleeping on my side, which will result in me waking up with a lot of discomfort on my stomach, where I sleep on my stomach and couldn’t sleep on my back. I’ve developed an addiction to caffeine, since I never have the energy to go to sleep without it. I’m what you would call a typical insomniac. Likewise, I get 5-6 hours of sleep a night if I’m lucky.

This is why I’m excited for 2022. I’ll be 38 years old, and I’m on the tail-end of the sleep-deprived life. In 2022, I’ll hopefully have fewer problems waking up during the night. More sleep can help with other sleep issues, as well. There are all sorts of different sleep interventions out there, including Ambient, but I have yet to try it.