I have always been a terrible sleeper.

My worst years of sleep were probably in early elementary school; I would lay awake in bed for hours most nights unable to fall asleep. Back then I shared a basement bedroom with my sister, and I had a collection of stickers stuck to my bedside table. I made up elaborate stories for these stickers and would repeat them to myself several times each night while I waited for sleep to come.

Some readers of this blog will be familiar with my stuffed dog, Bernard, who was my nighttime companion for most years of my life. I had stories for Bernard too. By manipulating his ears and his tongue and his jowls I could turn him into different members of the Bernard family, and replay stories from their lives.

If I turned my head toward the wall, I could examine the Precious Moments wallpaper that my mother had hung when we first moved into that house. I created stories for the Precious Moments people on the wallpaper too.

Sometimes things weren’t so precious. At one point in my staring at the wall I started to consider the wall itself and then I thought about the dirt behind the wall and then my mind wandered to the cemetery that was just a half mile from our house. It occurred to me that if coffins could travel (and maybe they could?) a coffin could break right through the wall exactly at the level where I was now lying in bed.

I got pretty freaked out about that, and tried to not have that thought again.

One time, maybe when I was in preschool, we went to the store and bought 101 Dalmatians on VHS.

“Everybody who takes a nap gets to watch 101 Dalmatians after nap,” my mother declared. We eagerly climbed into our twin beds and within minutes my sister was snoring away. I stared at Bernard. I stared at the wall. I stared at my sticker collection. I could not fall asleep and the more time ticked away the more upset I got. I wasn’t going to be able to watch 101 Dalmatians! I was trying to sleep but I couldn’t! It was so unfair that my sister was so good at sleeping and I was so bad at it! Would I have to stay in here while she got to watch the movie?

After what felt like hours of fretting, my mother opened the door and announced it was time for 101 Dalmatians. Warily, I said nothing about my inability to take a nap. My sister, having been asleep herself, could not betray me. I got to watch 101 Dalmatians despite having not fulfilled the prerequisites.

Things didn’t improve much during my teenage years. By then my sister and I were sharing the big room in the basement and the Precious Moments wallpaper had been ripped out of the little room to make way for my brother who apparently would not appreciate just how precious the moments could be.

I did get a portable CD player and headphones at some point in those early teenage years, and I spent most nights listening to Enya as I tried to fall asleep. I had scenes that I played in my head for each song, and there were nights when I listened to all four of my Enya CDs and still would just lay awake, bored.

College wasn’t much better at first. My first roommate was a bat, and kept an opposite schedule from me. I would cover my head in blankets attempting to drown out the noise of her typing or the light from her opening and closing and opening and closing the door to our room all night long. Why do they keep the dorm hallways so bright all night long, anyway?!

But that first year of college was probably the last year of really bad sleep. I had a great roommate the next year, one who shared an interested in going to bed early so we could make it to breakfast almost every morning. Eventually I moved off campus and had my own room again.

I am generally better at falling asleep now than I was as a child, but I am just as bad at staying asleep. Any small thing will wake me up, and the older I get the less likely I am to be able to fall back asleep after waking. I am sometimes filled with rage at others in my radius who do not contribute meaningfully to (nay, they sometimes even sabotage) the absolute darkness and quiet that I need for peaceful slumber.

I have, though, developed some tips and tricks over the years for good sleep which I will share here now in order of importance.

1. The most important thing is to stop caring how much sleep you get. Seriously. Don’t count hours, don’t look at the clock. Turn the number display off or hide your clock in a drawer if you must. Knowing that it’s 2:13 AM and that you have to get up at 5:50 AM is information that can only harm you. Ignorance is bliss.
2. Read in bed for a little bit each night. Preferably non-fiction. Preferably about the British royal family. I love the royal family, but I’ve never been kept awake because I am so eager to turn the page and find out how many pheasants George V shot in 1918.
3. Charge your cell phone somewhere other than your bedroom.
4. Do not allow yourself to think about scary things or stressful things after 8 PM. Tell yourself that you can pick it back up tomorrow at 6 AM but for now the subject is off-limits. Find something else to think about. My go-to safe topic is Star Trek and that usually leads me to other safe topics (Dyson sphere! how do they do it?!).
5. Don’t get cats. If you already have cats, I’m sorry. I adore my cats, but they are the worst creatures after 9 PM.

That’s it, that’s the secret sauce. And while I still would classify myself as a terrible sleeper, I would say I’m much better at it than I used to be. The above rules have at least made it much less stressful to stare at my ceiling for hours some nights.

But there are nights when I wish I still had that sticker collection.