{"id":899,"date":"2005-05-24T12:17:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-24T17:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=899"},"modified":"2005-05-24T12:17:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-24T17:17:00","slug":"psychological-sundries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=899","title":{"rendered":"psychological sundries"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s the kind of day outside where moving through the air is just effortless… Temperature perfect, sun mild, the hint of a breeze. Opening the office door and stepping outside seems like the most natural thing in the world–it doesn’t always, especially when one is assaulted by a sizable temperature difference when crossing the threshold.<\/p>\n

Some days I feel like I have ADD. Sometimes I can’t concentrate on anything for any length of time and my mind wanders all over the place. I feel like I’ve had it for years, since I have a slightly forgetful and disorganized streak, when I was younger I’d daydream all the time and wouldn’t always listen to my parents (not disobedient, just inattentive). On the other hand, depending on the activity I can focus for hours on end, and when I’m interested in the subject matter I can absorb information and detail very effectively. I’m starting to wonder whether it’s a time of day thing, or a dietary thing–whether there are outside circumstances that influence my state of mind in this manner. It’s vexing in that my scatterbrained state sometimes even seems to override my best efforts to focus. Does this happen to any of you? Or am I the only one?<\/p>\n

When I’m in the process of falling asleep at night, I am very often aware of the onset of sleep paralysis<\/a>. I’d say on average at least one night a week I am. It’s been like this ever since I can remember. Even when I was four, five, six years old I’d have dreams, nightmares, and hallucinations at all hours of the night, as well as the awareness of sleep paralysis. It wasn’t traumatic–many of them were good or harmless dreams, those nightmares that I had would come and go and my experiences with sleep paralysis, while intense, were brief. I was known to talk in my sleep quite a bit too, and even sleepwalk on occasion (my parents can tell stories…). I still dream a lot and for the most part am not overly affected by it, but the sleep paralysis issue has always stuck with me. I don’t know if any of you have experienced it, but for the uninitiated, it’s like being pulled against your will towards sleep and having no say about the matter, being partially or totally conscious of the situation, sending signals to your limbs, commanding them to move but getting no response. Now being pulled towards sleep normally wouldn’t be such a bad thing (I’m a big fan of sleep in general), but every time this occurs, if I just let myself go and allow sleep to close in, it never does. It’s hard to explain, but it’s almost like my mind becomes trapped in a kind of limbo state where I’m half-aware and half-unconscious, and paralyzed throughout. Needless to say it’s a very distressing set of circumstances, so whenever I’m conscious of the onset of sleep paralysis I shift my body to another attitude (usually by rolling over). Sometimes it sets in too quickly for me to catch it, however, and I have to try as hard as I can to send signals for my limbs to move so I can pull out, the alternative being pulled into the sleep\/waking limbo state. When I was younger it used to produce a kind of mild terror in me, somewhat akin (I would think) to the sensation of being trapped underwater, although certainly without the real risk of the latter situation. But nowadays it’s just a curiosity of my daily sleep routine. It happens and I don’t think much of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s the kind of day outside where moving through the air is just effortless… Temperature perfect, sun mild, the hint of a breeze. Opening the office door and stepping outside seems like the most natural thing in the world–it doesn’t always, especially when one is assaulted by a sizable temperature difference when crossing the threshold. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}