and settled down to sleep – what are you thinking?

Does that seem an odd question? Do you just close your eyes and !Boom! you’re off to dreamland? Or do you start doing mental gymnastics – jumping around all the things you have to do tomorrow or the things you did did today that are bothering you?

Or do you decide on what you want to dream about – mentally saying “I want to dream about ____”  Someone told me that they count backwards from 100 – I tried that, I lose track and it’s boring and I still don’t fall asleep.

Sometimes I try to sing myself to sleep, in my head singing, not out loud singing. I may start with the Doxology and move on to the Sanctu Kyrie part of Anthem . I’ll sing these over and over in my head. I guess I fall asleep eventually. One way or the other, most of the time, I fall asleep eventually.

If my brain decides I have to relive a variety of embarrassing, painful, uncomfortable incidents from the past, well then, there will be no sleep at all. Sometimes, I’ll just tell myself “Stop that, don’t think about that, think of something else”.

Sometimes I have conversations that could only take place in my mind, never in real life. Or, if some event is happening the next day I will rehearse what I will say and do. The time before sleep is never without thoughts, lots of thoughts, some conscious, some unbidden.

What happens in your head when you put it down to sleep?