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March 10, 2016 1:14 PM   Subscribe

A Journal of Insomnia is an interactive documentary that only comes alive at night. Make a nighttime appointment to experience a sleepless night through stories, images and webcam videos shared by the insomniac of your choice. posted by zarq (8 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Well, I've made an appointment for tonight, and am looking forward to it.

Use a google number if you have privacy concerns.
posted by synthetik at 1:31 PM on March 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Looking forward to trying this out as well. I'm a counselor who specializes in treating chronic insomnia with behavioral interventions (CBT-I is as effective as medication in the short term and more effective long term if anyones interested).

One of the things I talk with my clients about is how the brain falls asleep front to back, with the frontal lobes, which are responsible for higher judgement, often going to sleep before the rest of the brain (thus the success of the 2am home shopping networks) so I expect this will be a lot of fun.
posted by Jernau at 2:39 PM on March 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Never needed any help generating insomnia (is there an app for 'I need to be lazy and snarky today?') but this sounds fun, regardless.
posted by rokusan at 4:05 PM on March 10, 2016


One of the things I talk with my clients about is how the brain falls asleep front to back, with the frontal lobes, which are responsible for higher judgement, often going to sleep before the rest of the brain (thus the success of the 2am home shopping networks) so I expect this will be a lot of fun.

Is this why Ambian makes me do weird things?
posted by synthetik at 6:30 PM on March 10, 2016


Is this why Ambian makes me do weird things?

Assuming we're thinking of the same kind of weird things, then yes. Sort of.
posted by Jernau at 6:47 PM on March 10, 2016


I've had mild to medium insomnia on and off nearly all my life, and one really strange thing that happens is that when I'm sleeping well, sometimes I get to missing it. There's something kind of fantastic about being awake when everyone else is asleep and everything has that eerie quality to it, and you're padding around, listening to the isolated noises you usually don't notice. And I have the worst longing for pre-internet insomnia. When TV channels and radio stations would go off the air and there'd be just a few left, taken over by nocturnal stoner types hosting late-night movie shows or weird music videos or crackpot call in shows or music that'd never make the cut in commercial radio. It was like a Secret Insomniac Club. The boring diurnals would never even know these things existed. But 24 hour programming and on-demand content, which I'm otherwise all for, took that away.

And I've often fantasized about recreating some of that, maybe with a livestream-only channel that starts up at midnight and goes dark at 4 or 5AM your local time. This isn't quite that, but it seems to be similarly motivated.
posted by ernielundquist at 6:50 PM on March 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


ernielundquist, same. This exact feeling/nostalgia you describe transports me to my grandparents' house watching Dr. Who the summer after 8th grade at 4 a.m. on PBS.

Tom Baker's Dr. Who is my insomnia constant.

I had insomnia last night and finished a book at 3 a.m. when it began to thunderstorm here. It felt like I was keeping a secret from the whole world and pouring my heart out to the stars, one white-bright point all alone within a darkened shadow filled with sleeping souls, vibrating with my post-reading high and no one to share it with.

I'd be lying if there wasn't something both decadent and familiar about insomnia, but the price you pay for it gets pretty steep in aggregate. It makes me eat too much, physically ache and forget words when I'm speaking, plus I look like hell.

This looks really promising, thanks for posting!
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 9:25 PM on March 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I went through two people stories last night. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn't it. I learned about two people, but always with a faint feeling of oppression, like something was off, or that my normal wasn't the same as theirs.

I'm not sure I could recommend it to everyone I know, but I did send some emails to certain people.

I'm still unclear as to why we have to make appointments, other than insomnia is associated with nighttime usually.
posted by synthetik at 5:26 AM on March 11, 2016


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