I am posting to get your opinions on something that happened tonight.

Music started blasting from my neighbor’s place at 12-ish with some people screaming. Our corridor has a WhatsApp group and I wasn’t 100% sure which neighbor it is so I messaged there at around 12:30am.

I chose my words to be as polite as possible… dunno if it was polite enough. Something like: hey to the people who are having the party, have fun but please adapt the noise accordingly with the time with a thanks emoji.

They replied apologetically and added that it was their birthday. Didn’t feel like it was being used as an excuse but more an explanation.

Thinking maybe I should have let it slide regardless of whether it was their birthday or not but I did wake up exceptionally early this morning and needed some sleep after a hard day’s work.

Am I being too anal about it? How would you handle such a situation with noise?

I've found I need to use the noise label a lot more than I used to.

Given the influx of new user, this was to be expected in some way but I also found that, at least in the first couple of weeks, new people were behaving a lot better.

So this is a friendly reminder to try to keep the noise level low. Recurring themes I would like to see less of:

• Shallow dismissals / dismissals based on zero evidence.
• Pointless cynicism
• Taking cheap shots

I don't want to see these being normalized. If this isn't you, then great, but this post is also for you: It's an invitation to (very politely) call these things out when you see them.

Hey there, curious if any other folks on tildes suffer with this, and if so, if you can share things that have helped you.

Context: I am a very light sleeper. Eg: the sound of a phone vibrating, or whispering, will wake me up. I have no issues falling asleep at night, nor do I have any anxiety around sleep, I just wake up from the slightest noise. I've been like this all my life.

Unfortunately, I also live in a very noisy neighborhood: lots of modded vehicles, lots of rumbling bass, etc. I wake up 2-5 times a night. I might get a full night sleep once every 2 months.

For the past year, I've been working very hard on solving this problem. I have made some progress, but still suffer nightly because of this. Things I've done:

• Noise masking: I now have 2 white noise machines, an air purifier (max volume), and sleep with ear plugs. Unbelievably, the cars are still loud enough to be heard over all of that and wake me up. Even when I can't hear them, they vibrate the floor/my bed, and the vibration wakes me up. However, this has still made a massive difference (I went from about 3-4 hours sleep/night, to 6-7.)

• Sleep hygiene. I've learned a lot about it, and worked hard to implement different techniques. I keep a very steady sleep schedule. I eat well and exercise. I do not get in bed ever unless for sleep. etc. While this does not prevent waking up from noise, I think it helps with keeping sleep consistent (i.e. at least I know what time I'll get tired at night.)

• Light: In similar vein of sleep hygiene, I've learned a lot about how light impacts our sleep wake cycles; I avoid light and screens in the evening, and get in direct sunlight (for about 20-30 minutes) within an hour of waking. Again, doesn't help with noise, but helps tremendously with keeping sleep consistent.

• Medical help: I see a neurologist / sleep specialist. He is wonderful He prescribed a low dose of gabapentin, which has actually been really helpful. Unfortunately, it only lasts about 4 hours, so while the first half of the night is good, I still wake up many times in the second half of the night. I have tried some other medications (trazadone, benadryl, zyrtec) but they have either had no impact (trazadone), or make you drowsy the next day which makes me miserable (bendaryl, zyrtec).

One slight annoyance is that whenever I bring up sleep issues, the first response I tend to get is "you must have anxiety". Then, advice is tailored to that. Really, it is not anxiety, and therapy will not help me here. I just wake up insanely easy. It seems most solutions are for folks with anxiety, and I don't find a lot for folks that are just light sleepers. Can anyone relate?

Any advice you can throw my way?

Other than Exemplary, it might be useful for the ability to self label a comment. While in some sense it might be desirable for anyone posting a comment that falls under such a category, and is self aware, to simply refrain from posting, some of the boundaries for labels such as joke and off-topic can be rather fuzzy.

One thing I've been recently thinking about regarding ~'s tags is how much hate "Noise" gets. I realize that it doesn't further the discussion every time, but we also need to look at the context.

I've seen a few posts here tagged as noise when a community member posts something they've made or would like feedback on. In my opinion, when someone says "that's great!" or "I agree" that's completely acceptable. I've heard the "just upvote and move on" argument, but by our own admission, per the posted rules here and on reddit, the vote button does not equal "agree." It only means that the content is of value.

I'd love to tell someone "I really love the way you phrased that" or "I didn't know other people felt that way, too!" for something I agreed with but didn't have a whole lot to add without just being repetitive.

I'm not married to this idea, just something milling about in my head since on ~, it really seems like we're trying to use the vote button not for just "agree/ disagree." I posted on ~talk rather than ~tildes because I'm curious how other people see the issue, and I don't feel the need to lodge a formal suggestion.