I have grown dissatisfied with my mattress. I bought a new one 2 months ago, and I chose the firmest grade of foam available in my country. I don't like springs. When choosing a mattress, my goal is to find something that provides sufficient support without being too rigid. The foam grade vendors suggest for my weight is extremely soft, like sleeping on cotton candy. I don't know why people have this obsession with softness -- it is uncomfortable and terrible for your back.

My new mattress is perfectly fine but it is still not firm enough. Foam quickly loses its rigidity, and I can feel that it is happening already. It is not as firm as it was when it arrived. On a whim, I decided to sleep on the floor. Not literally on the floor, as I have no wish to press directly against the ground all night. I piled the folded plastic plaques we previously used for my son's playpen and wrapped them in a pair of thick quilts. The result was still very rigid but gentler on my joints. I slept on it yesterday. It was a success. I felt refreshed, only woke up once and got back to sleep right away. It was better than sleeping on my mattress.

I looked up traditional Japanese tatamis and futons, but they must be imported in my country because they were more expensive than a mattress. I ordered 4 meters of EVA -- each roll is 2 meters by 1 meter, 1 centimeter thick. I intend to stack them for a thickness of 2 centimeters, providing greater comfort with the same amount of rigidity. I may transition to (kinda) sleeping on the ground full time.

How do you like your mattress? Do you sleep on the floor as well? Or in something that resembles sleeping on the floor?

Have you ever had a dream you couldn't stop thinking about the next day? Or provoked strong emotions or actions out of you during your waking life?

Whether you view dreams as spiritual or scientific phenomenon, there's no doubt that our brains are capable of evoking very powerful and vivid imagery.

Have you ever had a dream you felt deeply connected to? Do you have a favorite dream? A least favorite dream?

What is the most profound impact a dream has had on you?

I have an external drive (3.5" hdd, SATA) in an enclosure (usb 3) (purchased separately), connected to a thunderbolt dock (OWC) connected alternately to an iMac and a macbook pro. The HDD goes to sleep, and causes problems. Freezes, weird internet access problems, kernel panics.

I have done some research, and can't seem to figure out:

how to know whether it is the drive, enclosure, or computer causing the sleep, although, fiddling with various settings on the mac seemed to have no effect, although it may have increased my battery usage :(

how to adjust settings on the drive, or in the enclosure.

How to determine what the sleep behavior of prospective drives will be.

As a workaround, I tried to write a zsh script to touch the drive ever few seconds. This kinda worked, but was a struggle to figure out appropriate permissions issues and how to make it run automatically.

I welcome all guidance, pointers to resources, clarifications, incantations, well-wishes.

There's a good thread going around on Tildes right now about sleep hygiene tips. One of those is making sure you stop using your electronics before bed, to help with circadian rhythms and whatnot.

Determined to make a fool of myself in spite of the above thread, last night I stayed up until 4am in bed reading various junk sites on my phone. As a consequence, I slept in until noon 😭. I don't want to do this anymore! I want a regular sleep schedule... 11-7 or 12-8 would be my dream.

I've tried blocking the problematic sites in the past, and it largely works for me for several months... Until I hit a bad mood patch and get antsy and bored, craving the dopamine hits, wanting to turn my brain off and just scroll mindlessly. (It's very much a self-soothe behavior...)

I think it would be easier to solve this problem if I had an arsenal of things to do that are nice and engaging, but don't involve using a phone or computer. Yet, I'm at a bit of a loss... Seemingly everything involves a computer or screen one way or another these days. I'd love an e-ink device that let's me listen to Spotify or something, but alas, I think I might need to look into low-tech solutions.

What do you do at night that doesn't involve screen time?

I just changed rooms, and my new neighbor makes noise. It's not much of a problem for other people, but I wake up at the slightest sound or the slightest change in lighting. Because of this, I am not able to sleep properly. I have tried earbuds and earplugs, but they hurt my ears. Can you suggest how I can become a heavy sleeper? Or how to sleep in this environment?

and a good japanese futon mattress as well.

i'm moving from a house into an apartment and am scaling my life down significantly. this seems a pretty good option... but unfortunately i don't know a whole lot about either of these (yet) so i'm looking for some guidance.

thanks!

I keep reading about people getting "covid insomnia". You could say, it's keeping me up at night.

Really though, it's been getting pretty regular for me. I take xanax once in a while but keeping it to an absolute minimum (no more than 0.25mg, once a week or so).

I tried the Sleep With Me podcast mentioned by @noblepath. It sort of helped. I kind of like the experience of it, the mindlessness, but I didn't continue past the second night.

It did give me the idea to just run a youtube video of rain sounds on my tv though, a lot better than what I used to do (leave netflix on some rewatches I know by heart). This is the one I'm currently enjoying: https://youtu.be/_x3hVRSIe2g

My sleep mask is falling apart. I'm in the market for a new one. I could just get any 15 euro mask but it seems like it's a category of products that is riddled with cheap crap and overpriced gadgetry.

I don't mind a high budget mask if it's legitimately good quality and will last a long time. I'm also open to try the "smart masks" that can play music or white noise or whatever but again, it has to be good quality.

Caveat: I'm in europe, and a lot of US brands aren't available here. But if it's really good I can import it.

I listen to music throughout each day but one of the most challenging things for me is finding good music to unwind and fall asleep to. What do you listen to before bed or while trying to fall asleep?

These are currently on my sleep rotation:

Sigur Ros - ( )
Explosions in the Sky - The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place
River Boat Sleep - Guided Meditation

I've tried listening to a lot of piano and classical but I get so invested in what they are playing that I can't fall asleep.

Is there a good smartwatch/simile that monitors sleep and has excellent battery life (measured in weeks not hours)?

I use the Withings (ex-Nokia) Steel HR, but it … kinda sucks. The bluetooth pairings very often lose sleep data, it's very inaccurate, the reporting sucks for non-24s, and the leather bracelet is of very poor quality, keeps breaking.

I really don't care for the fitness/step tracking which, as someone else here put it, thinks typing on a keyboard or eating is a step.

I also briefly tried an Oura (https://ouraring.com/), but I never got it to work and had to send it back.

I also don't care much for any of those "sleep quality" trackers that try to detect if I snore and what not. I can do sleep studies in my own time, I just want to have accurate stats on whether and when I am asleep.

I (probably) have aphantasia, so I only dream when I'm actually trying to make my brain dream something, so I usually only dream to indulge in NSFW fantasies to jack off and despite this barely anything makes it into my mind. (I swear someone has said something like this before, I think they said they 'did it to embrace their kinks to improve mental health', which is quite unique and pretty cool.)

I often have a really hard time getting myself to wake up and get out of bed in the mornings in time to go to work or whatever else I need to do. I was hoping people might be willing to share any good strategies they use to get themselves up and going every day.