I have the same problem, and often wake up unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Sometimes I can fall back asleep quickly, sometimes I am up for a couple hours, occasionally I won’t get back to sleep at all. Whenever it happens it ruins my energy and mood the following day. It started to impact my energy level to where I couldn’t exercise the way I used to. I’d become fatigued so easily that I could barely make it through my routine. Sometimes I wake up with my joints and muscles feeling so sore that I could swear I was beaten with a stick while sleeping. I started gaining a lot of weight despite no changes to my diet. My mood and brain fog were the worse they’ve ever been. I had maybe one “good” day every month or so.

A coworker and I were sharing our gripes about getting older, and I mentioned my sleep problems and the impact to my quality of life. They had gone through the same thing years ago, and ended up being diagnosed with severe sleep apnea; they recommended I get tested for sleep apnea, too. I talked to my doctor and scheduled a sleep study; turns out I also have severe sleep apnea.

If you have any of the sleep problems like me, then I recommend you talk to your doctor about it. Here’s a few things to keep in mind:

• Insist on an in-lab study. Your sleep specialist may try to have you do an at-home test, but those are inaccurate and unreliable. An in-lab study will provide better data.
• When you receive your results, make sure they’re evaluated using the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) guidelines, not the insurance industry guidelines. My first sleep specialist diagnosed me with mild sleep apnea and said I didn’t qualify for treatment. Poor sleep was affecting every aspect of my health and daily life, so I sought a second opinion from an independent sleep specialist who reviewed the same test results and concluded that I had severe sleep apnea; they said insurance industry guidelines underestimate the severity of most apnea patients. Getting that second opinion made a significant difference in receiving the treatment I needed.
• If you do end up needing a CPAP, research which masks work best for the position and how often you turn over in your sleep.

These days I also avoid engaging. Not just because I realized that arguing on the internet is a waste of time, but I grew tired of having the same arguments over and over. More people today believe the world is flat than people did back in the middle ages. I honestly believed when I was younger that the internet was going to put the sum of humanity’s knowledge at everyone’s fingertips, making the world overall a smarter, more enlightened place. Instead, the internet is broadly just a bigger soapbox for the brash and self-righteous.

These days, you could spend 30+ minutes writing a thoughtful reply, deliberately avoiding an argumentative tone, only to be accused of using or being an AI.

They are referring to when New Jersey had a huge problem with needles washing up on the beaches back in the 90s.

Hell yeah! Where all my New Jerseyans at?

Right? I saw the meme, chuckled because I relate, but then I saw those bricks. Immediately looked up local gardening and hardware supply store to see if they have them in stock. This is EXACTLY what I need for my gardens.

What you’re describing isn’t really a failure of the education system. It’s a reflection of the average American mindset. I was born in the US and grew up in the public school system. I loved math and science, and while I struggled with the rules of grammar, I still loved reading. I have always had a love of learning new things.

But most people aren’t like that. Not just in America, but across the world. A true love of learning is rare, and I think that’s because learning is hard. It requires humility, effort, and the being able to admit that one might be wrong. It means questioning long held beliefs and sometimes changing parts of yourself completely. That’s a deeply uncomfortable prospect and many people avoid it.

I think most people fall sleep while leaning on the third tier of Maslow’s pyramid (belonging and social identity.) The next level, where self-reflection and self-actualization begins, is hard to climb because it means hanging question marks on their long-held ideas and beliefs. They choose the safety of clinging to comfort and routine.

The current controversy over dismantling the US Department of Education is a complex issue that can’t be fully unpacked in a short reply on the internet. But in my view, what’s driving the American zeitgeist toward authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism is this resistance to growth and change. Internalizing new ideas means re-evaluating what you’ve always believed. For many, that feels like a threat. And instead of rising to meet the challenge, they’d rather pull everything down to their level, where they feel safe.

But, at least for me, the climb is worth it. Continuing to learn means accepting discomfort. It means growing past who you were in order to become someone better. It’s how we find purpose, empathy, and a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive.