In Blackest Night – Mirtazapine – Day 7

Seven days.  Sometimes the fate that sentence implies based on ‘The Ring‘ seems so alluring it’s beyond belief.  Today has been an improvement on yesterday.  The ‘ride-along’ feeling is still there and has waxed and waned like my own internal lunar cycle.  The pain from my assumed pinched nerve is still there but has been a lot better so far (probably jinxed myself now).  My mind felt a lot clearer earlier on and I was able to focus – had to send an important e-mail as well as sort out a few other things.  Come the afternoon, the fog descended on my brain and focusing became very difficult – still trying to sort out this letter that I need to send and a few technical hurdles with my e-mail earlier really got to me.

In regards to sleep, I haven’t napped at all and I didn’t go to sleep until around 03:00 – felt wide awake despite the meds supposedly causing drowsiness and was hooked on Final Fantasy XV (it’s super addictive and a nice distraction from reality).  Considering I had around four hours sleep (most likely less), my energy levels haven’t been too shabby today.

There’s not much else to report, to be honest…I’ve been doing a few updates to the overall blog network as another means of keeping busy but without too much brainpower required – I’ve sorted out my Amazon affiliate links and set up some advertising as a means of supporting the site.  Unlike a lot of blogs I’ve visited, my ads are unobtrusive and a lot less cumbersome.  If you’re an Amazon shopper then please click through on any of my Amazon ad links.  You can also click through on my Topcashback link so you can earn cashback on hundreds of online retailers as well as a sign up bonus by registering from my referral link.

I’ve also, finally, set up my Amazon seller account so I can clear out left-over stock items and sell any odds and ends, so check it out!

Considering I’m usually pretty shit at sticking to my plans of blogging regularly, I’ve managed a minimum of one post a day for the past week so I’ve proven to myself I can do it, regardless of having much to talk about or not.

Before I sign off on yet another mundane post, however, I want to delve into the sleep territory as I’ve given it a lot of thought.  As always I can’t speak for my peers [READ: others suffering from mental health issues] but I think, subconsciously at least, that perhaps a big reason for sleeping frequently when suffering from the likes of depression is that faint hope that you may not actually wake up.  By sleeping more, you are increasing the chances of it happening.  I have to admit, I have been devastated on many occasions that I have woken up.  I can’t find a figure for how many people die in their sleep – one search result suggested 1 in 8 Americans die in their sleep…that statistic seemed a bit too exaggerated.  I think it’s feasible that a few thousand die each year, across the globe, in their sleep.  The majority are likely to be elderly or infants due to a variety of factors such as general living/health conditions, but for those that fit the ‘in between’ category obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is most likely the biggest cause.

I believe I suffer from sleep apnoea (my wife definitely would agree) and I believe that my energy levels and day-to-day life are hugely affected by it.  I know a number of people who have been diagnosed with sleep apnoea who also suffer from depression – it seemed like too much of a coincidence so I looked into it and it turns out that various scientific studies have identified a link between the two.  Here’s the top one from a Google search.

I may be biased in my opinion, but it seems that the invisible and indescribable link between mind and body is a lot more evident when it comes to the negatives.  That may be the pessimist talking but, as George Bernard Shaw once said,

“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.”