Sneaky Subconcious

Posted by Braden

As late nights and busy days increase, I give my body less and less sleep, and my body is finding sneakier and sneakier ways of getting the sleep it needs anyways. I take precautions: to keep from falling asleep in class, I sit in the front few rows, never slouch enough to get comfortable, and eat sugar before and during class. To prevent sleeping through my alarm clock, I use my own recorded voice on my cell phone alarm in conjunction with my alarm clock and watch alarm. My subconscious recently discovered a real devil of a trick, though—it convinces me that even though I can hear my alarms, they're not important.

I don't know how to explain it, but somehow, within my dreams, I just know that that alarm isn't really for me. It's to help wake up somebody else. Or it must have been left set from the previous day. Or school has been canceled today, so I don't really need to get up. Or somehow, within my dream, I earned the right to sleep in a little longer with no negative consequences. Or time won't really start again until I acknowledge the alarms, so if I ignore them long enough, I'll get extra sleep without losing any time. Or even though it's terrible to sleep in, if I do wake up, then all these people here in my dream with me will die when I hop out of that world and into consciousness.

I think that's all of the excuses that it has come up with so far. It doesn't happen every night, but it does happen a lot of the time--maybe 2 of every 3 nights. In a way, it's sort of exciting to wonder what new way I'll think up to trick myself into sleeping a little longer. In another way, it's really terrifying. I never know who's going to be smarter: the unconscious me that's sleeping, or the unconscious me that's scheming. And me making it to class on time is in the balance!