I’m one of those people who has a particularly hard time sleeping at evening. I have never been the style of human who could just kneel down, close my eyes, and drift off to a peaceful sleep. In fact, for as long as I can remember, I have suffered from insomnia. Even as a child, I was riddled with anxiety and laid awake at evening dreaming of all of the dangers that could befall my friends and family. I have suffered from sleepless evenings and unpleasant days ever since, then one of the things that I’ve realized about my insomnia, is that I can improve it vastly with the right environmental conditions. So long as I have complete darkness, sufficient background noise, and an seriously freezing environment, I can generally sleep for a few hours. The concern comes when I stay in someone else’s house. If I do not have control over my lighting, noise pollution, and indoor temperature, I am likely to kneel awake all evening. This is exactly what happened on my recent trip back home for the holidays. I was staying in my Grandmother’s basement, which is inherently freezing and damp, then because of the outdoor temperature gets down into the 0 degree range, the basement can be brutally cold. She installed a small, electric fireplace in the basement many years ago. Apparently, no one had actually experimented with sleeping next to it. I woke up in the middle of the evening, burning sizzling and perspiring through my sheets. I desperately turned down the temperature on the fireplace, but there was no choice between chilly freezing and burning hot. The basement was seriously sizzling and impossible to sleep in, or chilly freezing and irritated to wake up in. Needless to say, it was a sleepless holiday.
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