Because life just isn't fun without challenges, I've picked up a new hobby this week: insomnia. I've given it a chance, but I've got to say that so far, I don't get the appeal.
I'd like to blame it on science somehow. Perhaps the drop in barometric pressure causes restlessness. I don't know if that's a fact. I also don't know if the barometric pressure has dropped. Come to think of it, I don't really even understand how barometric pressure works. But it sounds impressive, right? Maybe it's the fact that we're on the precipice of the summer solstice. When it doesn't get dark until 9 p.m., going to bed shortly afterwards feels like I'm being cheated out of my evenings somehow. It's disruptive to my circadian rhythms. (See? I'm dropping mad science terms all over the place like a proper intellectual.)
I'm just desperate to blame this on anything or anyone other than myself. Truth be told, I'm pretty sure I know exactly why I've had trouble getting to sleep lately. For one, I need to stop drinking caffeinated soda after dark -- that's just dumb. I also know a lot of the blame falls on my side hustle as a weekend DJ. During the week, I try to live a somewhat respectable schedule of getting to bed by midnight and getting up around 7 a.m. On the weekends, though, I'm spinning records until 2 a.m., which means I don't usually get to bed until 4 a.m. or later -- and then wake up at the crack of noon wondering where my weekend went. When I was in my twenties, that lifestyle was easy to master. These days, it's a little more taxing.
But honestly, I'm trying my best not to divulge the REAL reason for my sleeplessness, which has less to do with circadian rhythms and owes more to me staying up til the wee hours watching ridiculous videos on TikTok. I'll get in bed, tuck myself in, realize I'm super bored, and grab my phone. 97 videos later, I'll look at the clock and realize it's 1:30 a.m. and then lay there worrying about how many brain cells I've just lost watching utter nonsense.
Thankfully, though, the internet has an answer for sleepless nights, and that answer is Spotify. Specifically, the ever-growing and ever-popular category on Spotify simply called "sleep." Just scroll past pop, rock, and country -- you'll find it towards the end of their genre list. Inside this category are a number of carefully curated playlists with the sole aim of lulling you to sleep. I'm deeply fascinated by it. Perusing Spotify playlists might honestly be my new favorite hobby.
I've written about some of these Spotify sleep playlists before, but I never really took a deep dive. The last time, I was captivated by my discovery of five distinct playlists -- the ones labelled "white noise" (214 "songs" of pure static fuzz), "pink noise" (196 tracks of slightly deeper static fuzz), "brown noise" (230 tracks of even lower pitched static fuzz), "black noise" (essentially the soundtrack to the lobby of Hell,) and "green noise," which is identical to pink noise except they superimpose sounds of frogs and cicadas and such over the top of it.
Somehow this is supposed to make me sleepy. Instead it just makes me giggle. It all just kinda sounds like the interior of an airplane cabin to me, except that it must not, because there's a separate playlist called "airplane cabin noise." They ALL sound the same to me. Either my ears are off or there's a scam afoot here. Either way, I applaud whoever earns an honest living by recording static and marketing it as a magical sleep aid. I bet that dude sleeps soundly every night.
Every one of these playlists has over 100 tracks that are each roughly around five minutes long. I've rapidly discovered that the only thing more off-putting than listening to five minutes of static is the one second of silence that plays as it changes tracks. I tried lulling myself to sleep in static-filled bliss the other night, but every time that second of silence hit, it felt like I could suddenly hear my own soul and my eyes immediately popped open. What happened? Did I die? Did the plane crash?
The other trendy sleep sound that the new-age-iers amongst us swear by are "binaural beats." It's an auditory illusion that occurs when you play separate tones of slightly different frequencies to each ear at the same time. The human brain can't process the different tones together, so it instead perceives the noise as a combined third tone. Supposedly, this can induce a semi-hypnotic state of relaxation and tranquility. I've found it can also induce a semi-gross state of nausea. Plus, the effect only happens when you're listening through headphones, otherwise it just sounds like your cat is having a lie-down on a Casio keyboard.
Speaking of Casio keyboards, that's pretty much what Spotify's "lo-fi sleep" playlist sounds like. Or there's the "sleepy piano" playlist, which sounds like you're trying to catch a catnap inside a Von Maur -- as opposed to "calming nature music," which sounds like someone let birds into the Von Maur. "Floating in space" is a neat playlist if you refrain from thinking that you'd die within about five seconds in the vacuum of space. And if you think the "train sounds" playlist is relaxing, you might have problems way deeper than insomnia.
Personally, the one sleep playlist I like is called "gloomcore," described by Spotify as "wandering the forest as the fog floats through the trees." I dig it -- but I dig it a little TOO much, because instead of sleeping, I prefer to just lay there and groove out to the gloomy bliss.
Do the sleep playlists work? Well, you be the judge -- it's presently 1:30 a.m. and I'm currently listening to the "Deep Sleep" playlist while writing a column about listening to the "Deep Sleep" playlist at 1:30 a.m. Mission unaccomplished. But I'm not giving up on it yet -- after all, what else do I have better to do in the middle of the night? I mean, other than sleep.
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