Sleeping with the tv off - a case study

 Wgbw, I know I just promised to try and stay away from the self-reflective posts, but this is sort of related since I often fall asleep to scary movies so bear with me.

I've chronicled my journey with sleeping with the tv on and off and thought I'd keep you posted about it. 

9/17/12: I've determined I might have to start sleeping with the tv off. 

To those of you know me, this is unbelievable. For years I have slept with the TV on. The whole reason the couchbread is so popular is because of the gigantic TV in front of it.  It used to be a deal breaker with girls. It was never anything personal, but if you couldn't sleep with the tv on I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Even the whole 'let's put the sleep timer' thing never made much sense to me.

I mostly trace this back to my childhood. I grew up sleeping with the tv on. Whenever I went to stay at someone's house I could never sleep. Now, being 26 years old, I still can't sleep with the tv off when I'm not in my own bread.

Lately though it's been giving me problems. For the last 4 months I've been waking up every 3-4 hours, checking the clock, and then immediately falling back asleep. Part of the reason I can fall back asleep so easily is that I've seen every episode of the hit tv show Friends 2539 times so when I wake up and it's on the TV I don't tune in too much. I didn't read too much into at first, but then it was a nightly ritual. After doing some research I found out that it can screw with your blood pressure, your ability to make sound life choices, and can cause over the top nightmares. Now I've never believed in the whole 'sleeping with the tv on leads to depression' argument because I'm generally happier when I wake up and the TV is on and more depressed when I realized someone has shut it off.  But the rest of this kind of spooked me. I've had high blood pressure off and on, make poor decisions (well rarely), and have creepy nightmares on the reg.

After realizing that I'm probably the only person I know who has (or even wants) to sleep with the TV on, I've decided I'm going to start shutting it off when I get drowsy. We'll see how this goes.

9/24/12: What a dumb idea that was

Well, after a day or two of that experiment, I've determined that I'm never shutting off the TV again. Ever.

After an hour of being restless I'd eventually fall asleep but then wake up every 3 hours. And when I woke up I'd just lay there confused, wondering why the TV was off.  "Did the power go out? Did Bricker sneak in here to play a cruel prank on me? Am I not at the Cone?"

I've also figured out that there could be other culprits. My mattress pad is old, my beds not pushed up against the wall anymore, and it's no longer summer (story for another post).

Now of course I'll have to figure out the other problems associated with sleeping with the TV on at a later date (i.e. settling down with someone, our energy bill, etc.), but for now I think I'll keep tuning in.