More Insomnia Mind Games

I've been having a bit of insomnia lately, the kind where I sleep for a few hours, then snap awake hours before I'm ready to get up. A few months ago, I wrote about a couple of the mind games I play when my sleeping patterns are disrupted. Here are a few more.

I’ve always had a mental picture of my brain as a huge library. To access my “library” of a brain, I imagine riding up to it in an elevator, as the library is at the top of the building. The library’s lobby is a J shaped room with windows all around looking out at the world.

Memories are files, with similar memories stored in folders, then bound into books. The library consists of several rooms, each containing related books. Each room has large glass windows and a door.

When I remember something, I visualize myself going into one of these rooms, turning on the light and finding the proper book and page. Conversely, when I want to put something out of my mind, I visualize closing the book, turning out the lights as I leave the room, close the blinds on the window, then locking the door. If the memory is persistent, I’ll visualize pulling a large curtain around the entire room, blocking it from view.

Another mind game I play when I can’t sleep is to imagine going back in time and imagining how I prove that I am from the future or how I manage in that time. I’ve imagined showing my car to George Washington for example, or perhaps prove myself by means of something so small as a handheld calculator. A variation on that theme is that I keep my identity secret, but I soon become rich by betting on events that are history to me. If anyone remembers the movie, “The Final Countdown”, a man left behind forty years in a time rift, does exactly this to become rich.

A related mind game is to bring someone forward in time, with them appearing inside my house, Depending on which time period I choose, I mentally list all the things in my house they’d notice that would let them know that they weren’t in their own world anymore. Sometimes I widen the game a bit and take them out for a ride in the car so they can see how much the world has changed.

Think I’ll go back to bed and try to get a nap.