Friday, April 27, 2007

3:00AM, Hugging Santa

So sleepy. I've had three nights in the past week where I've woken up, suddenly and for no discernible reason, in the middle of the night and been unable to fall back asleep for an hour or longer. A big part of it is definitely jitters about the tournament this weekend, but not exactly the usual "performance anxiety" sort. It's more like my mind is so preoccupied with trying to really get a handle on Chil Sung Il Rho that the moment I wake up a portion of my thought shift directly to the form. I wake up, and find myself rehearsing the series of movements, but using the sometimes-goofy shorthand terminology I rely on in my head if I get stuck while performing it. "Give Santa a hug and push an elf into the snow. Step across and draw a bow. Punch. Turn and do the ridge hand backstance toes-up thingie. Draw a bow. Punch. Hug Santa...." And so on.

What's really frustrating is that it's not like I slowly wake up and my mind starts to rev up and after a while I am actually awakening instead of falling back to sleep. Nope. It's an all-at-once thing. I open my eyes, and my mind is going full tilt. I am filled with energy. I feel certain I could just get up and get the day started.

Except for it being, you know, 3:00AM or whatever. Last night it was 1:45. And 4:15.

I've been trying to figure out why this is happening. What's weird is there's nothing particularly negative in my life that would be causing this that I can think of. My back pain might have something to do with it -- rolling into certain positions has a nasty habit of really zinging my inflamed shoulder joint, even after 2 weeks. But typically if I wake up from the pain I just roll over and fall asleep within a few minutes. I've had bouts of insomnia before, but this one feels different. It's not the "troubled restless mind keeping me from falling asleep" feeling that I've found usually accompanies insomnia. Rather, I feel like I've had a burst of energy -- my heart is beating fast (not racing, not as if I had a nightmare -- more like I'm just kind of excited), my mind is acutely focused and active, my hands and feet twitching to do ... something. Anything. Get moving.

Part of it may be traced to my current work environment. Our organization continues to be in a state of stasis. We have new bosses a few levels above us, and as a result all of the organizational changes that were being made are on hold while they get settled in. The future looks largely the same as it did a couple of weeks ago -- both for my group and for myself -- but everything is on hold for another couple of weeks. We've pretty well run out of projects that can be completed and need new marching orders, but those orders won't come down until they get the organizational structure figured out, so we're just sort of ... buzzing along. Fridays are currently management-approved half-day/movie days, since there's so little to do. Last week was "Hot Fuzz" (spectacularly funny, by the way). Today may very well be "Grindhouse" if we can get a couple of bugs and a meeting out of the way -- if so, our manager is even going to pay for the tickets and make it a team building/morale boosting exercise. Bravo, say We.

So work is sort of a non-issue right now. No pressure, no real worries. Just sort of a test pattern: "Please stand by." So maybe my brain is channeling my usual work-energy into late night neural activity. Seems possible, but I dunno. I mean, I keep busy with other stuff -- doing ads and graphics work for friends, reading tech news items and learning new applications. It's not like I'm just sitting, staring at the screen for 8 hours a day. I keep myself occupied.

I had a thought, though, about how the Chil Sung forms are supposed to be energizing and rejuvenating forms,. I've been working almost exclusively on Chil Sung Il Rho for a couple of weeks now. And while it's theoretically rejuvenating, I think that largely depends on one's ability to breathe and relax while performing it. For the first couple of weeks I worked on it, I was doing neither very well, and as a result I was exhausting myself: it's a very physically demanding form. And my difficulty in relaxing while training is well documented throughout my blog.

But over the past week I've begun to get a better handle on it, breathing more correctly and even beginning to relax a bit. But while I haven't been as physically shot when I wrapped it up each time as I was before, I don't exactly walk away from it feeling rejuvenated. More like winded and weary, but okay to do it again within 30 seconds or so. Definitely a sign that I'm getting it right, not fighting my way through it so much as before. Handling the exertion better, perhaps, but rejuventated and energized? Nuh uh.

But still, there are these sudden, unexpected (and not exactly welcome, given the hours at which they occur) bursts of energy. And they seem to occur only on nights when I've been training. I took Wednesday night off and slept straight through the night, like a baby. Trained Monday, Tuesday (twice), and Thursday and awoke each of those nights and had difficulty returning to sleep, lasting at least an hour each time. I think there's more than a little bit of coincidence at work, there.

So, on the plus side, perhaps I've begun to tap into the rejuvenating and energizing qualities of the Chi Sung forms. And the minus side, though, of course, my timing could be better.

Yawn.

Sigh.

Mood: Pleasantly sleepy
Now Playing: "Yo Vivire!", Celia Cruz

No comments: