Five Things Within Reach When You Lie Down, and One Small Act for Each

Right now, if you are lying down, how many things can your right hand reach?

I counted one night. An alarm clock with glow-in-the-dark hands and a slightly scratched glass face. A novel with a corner folded down three weeks ago. The air-conditioner remote, its batteries weak enough that you have to point it almost at the unit. A tiny green bottle of medicated oil, the cap worn smooth. And the long body pillow, always kicked to the foot of the bed and dragged back up.

Five things. I have slept beside them for years without once looking at them as things that were doing something to my bedtime. I am Thư, twenty-nine, and I teach a kindergarten class. I get home with a hoarse voice every evening and my head still full of eighteen children talking at once. By the time I lie down, my hand already knows the way to each of them before my head has thought anything.

This goes through them one at a time: what I do with each, where I slip, and one very short act attached to it. You do not need to buy anything. You only need what is already at the head of your bed.

First, to be clear: this is not about tidying the room, and it is not about minimalism. My bed is still a mess and the body pillow still gets kicked off. What I care about is what my hands do in the last ten minutes of the day, because hands tend to move first and the head catches up later.

Five familiar things, and the small act I attach to each

The alarm clock with the glow-in-the-dark hands

Ten past one. I reach out, turn the clock around so the luminous hands show pale green, and lie there counting: six hours left, if I fall asleep right now. Five and a half, if I fall asleep in half an hour. Five hours, if...

I used to think I checked the time to know how long I had been awake. I was not. What I was doing was sums: how many hours of sleep were left so that standing in front of the class in the morning would be all right. Eighteen small children are at the gate by half past seven, and none of them will wait for me to have slept enough.

The easiest explanation: I am worried, so I keep checking. But look closer, and every time I turn the clock around the number gets smaller, and I feel I am losing a sum nobody has handed me the question for. The hands do not tell me I am awake. They tell me I am short, and I believe them more than I believe myself.

Now when I have set the alarm I turn the face to the wall and rest my hand on its back for a moment, as if to say "keeping the time is your job now." Fifteen seconds.

The first night I turned it back three times to look. After a week, some people find they reach out less, and some still turn it around to look. I am in the second group, but I turn it more slowly than before.

One day I got more drastic and took the battery out, or switched off the alarm, to "remove temptation," and then lay there worrying I would oversleep, so I kept watch and was more tired than before. It sounds decisive so it is easy to be swept up. But the alarm still has to run. The only thing to drop is the looking.

The novel with the folded corner

Ten to eleven, I say "just one chapter." Ten past midnight I am still in chapter thirty-five, eyes stinging, hand still turning pages.

Just this chapter.

You are up at seven tomorrow.

Just this one, really.

I thought I simply loved the story. That would be easy to solve: the book is too good to put down. But what was pulling me was not the plot. I dislike stopping in the middle, like leaving a job unfinished. My whole day at work is unfinished things: one child has not finished eating, another is crying and not yet comforted. By night I want one thing to end completely, and a chapter is the only thing with a clear stopping point, so I keep chasing the next stopping point and forget what I was looking for.

I now pick a stopping place in advance, usually the bottom of the page that is open, and fold the corner or slip a card in right there, even mid-sentence. Then I let the book rest on my chest for a moment before putting it away.

The first time I itched all over, as if I had walked out in the middle of a meal. After the first week, some people find the itch eases, and some find it gets worse for a few nights before it eases. I cannot promise the easing.

I also often promise myself "until the end of this chapter," and every chapter is longer than I think. The word "chapter" sounds like a boundary, but the author drew that boundary, not me. Stop at the page to be safe, because a page you can see the end of at a glance.

The air-conditioner remote with weak batteries

Twenty-six degrees. Hot. Twenty-five. Cold. Twenty-six. Every press is a beep, and every beep is another small lift in how awake I am.

I used to think I was "sensitive to temperature," meaning the problem was in the room. But one night I put the remote far away, left it at twenty-six, and just lay there. Fifteen minutes later I still felt a bit warm, and then at some point I did not notice, it passed. Pressing the remote turned out not to adjust the room. It adjusted the feeling of "I am not reassured yet." Every press was me telling myself I was handling it.

Now I set it once, then put the remote where I cannot reach it from my spot, or turn it face down on the far end of the table. For the first fifteen minutes I do not adjust again. If I am still uncomfortable after fifteen minutes I adjust once more, then wait another fifteen.

The first time, fifteen minutes felt like half an hour. After a week, some people find they press far less, and some only cut back by a press or two. I am in the second group.

There was a night I went too far the other way: I endured it till morning though I was properly too hot or too cold, because I thought that was "practising patience." It sounds like discipline so it is easy to get swept up in. But endurance is not the point here. If your body is saying something clearly, adjust it. Just do not adjust out of a habit of pressing every two minutes.

The tiny green bottle of medicated oil

Thirty seconds. I open the cap, hold it a hand's length from my nose, take one sniff, close it. Mint rushes up, a little sharp, as familiar as my grandmother's house. Then I put it away.

I do not rub anything on, and if this smell bothers you or stings your eyes, skip this one, many people do not get on with it. What matters here is not what the oil does. It is that this smell has been tied since I was small to late afternoons at my grandmother's, and it says "the day is over."

The thing anyone could say: pleasant smells help you relax. I would not dare claim that. What I find truer is that a smell repeated at the same place and the same hour turns into a full stop at the end of a sentence. The nights I forget it, the day feels like it has no full stop.

You can pick something with a smell that is familiar to you alone, not necessarily medicated oil: soap, hand cream, orange peel. Smell it for thirty seconds at the same hour every night, then put it away.

The first time I only noticed I was sniffing a small bottle. A week later some people find the smell starts to "announce the hour," some find nothing yet, and some need much longer.

For a while I changed the smell every night, lavender then sandalwood then jasmine, hunting for the "magic scent." The hunt itself made it appealing. But what ties to bedtime is repetition, not the kind of smell. Pick one and keep it.

The long body pillow that keeps getting kicked off

I kick it down when I am warm and drag it back up when I am cold. One night I counted five times.

The easy reason: I do not sleep still. But look a little further, and the body pillow is the only thing on the bed that I make demands of. I insist it sit in the right place at the right angle, and each time it slips I have to lift myself up to fix it. I am paying wages to something that does not turn up for work.

Before I lie fully down, I put the pillow anywhere, then rest one hand on it and do not move it. I just notice the weight of my hand on the pillow for a few breaths, about a minute. If it gets kicked off that night, I let it be kicked off, and in the morning a pillow is still a pillow.

The first time I laughed at myself for guarding a pillow. A week later some people stop fixing it, and some still fix it but without the irritation.

One night I tried eight different ways of hugging it in a row and still felt it was not quite right, because I kept believing one more small adjustment would finish the job. There is no perfect way. One way good enough for the first five minutes is all you need.

If you do not have all five, or none of these are yours, pick any three things lying near your hand and find one small act for each, like the ones above. What to keep is that each act is done slowly exactly once, whichever thing it is.

I suggest choosing only one in the first week, not all five. Doing all five turns bedtime into a list to complete, and a list is exactly what keeps a head busy.

If you tried and it did not work

I followed each one carefully, the first week had a few better nights, and by the second week everything was back to normal. There are two reasons I recognise in myself.

One: I did each act like ticking a list and then lay there waiting to sleep. The small acts turned into procedures, wait for five procedures and sleep will come, and sleep does not arrive on command. The way forward is to drop some, keep exactly one that feels easiest, and do it without waiting for anything.

Two: some nights what keeps me up is not within reach. It is tomorrow, a call not yet made, a thing not yet said. Then no amount of fiddling with an alarm clock is enough. On those nights I write it out, or tell someone, and only then go back to bed. On nights like that I often reread writing three lines before the lights go off.

And if sleeplessness drags on for several weeks, you are very tired in the day, someone at home says you snore loudly or seem to stop breathing, or you feel sad or anxious for a long time, please see a doctor. The small acts here are about a pair of hands at the end of the day, not medicine, and they cannot replace a check-up.

If you would like another direction for the hands, bedtime hand-release meditation goes deeper into exactly the place where hands clench all day.

Last night I turned the clock face to the wall. Its back touched my palm, slightly cool, and my hand paused there for a moment.

Then the light went off.