Counting Sheep

Last night was a typical night for me, and one that didn't involve a lot of sleep for the first few hours of lying in bed.  It began simply enough - a few lines of a poem materialised in my mind (I am not a poet, therefore it is my duty to write it down as soon as the muse hits).  Is it just me, or do all writers find that the moment they are supposed to be asleep they are inundated with ideas?

So, once I'd written those four lines down (I do actually quite like them and will definitely be working on the full poem soon), I lay back down to try and sleep.  After much tossing about, getting up to straighten my sheet, go to the loo etc, I decided to try the well-known idea of counting sheep.

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This went well for the first few then I noticed that with each sheep, my visual of the fence changed ever so slightly.  Then I started pondering how exactly sheep run (you know, for the run up to the jump) - do they run like pigs (thinking about sheep make me think of 'bah ram you' and babe) or do they gallop like horses (jumping fences = horses)?  I still haven't worked out the answer. 

At 18 sheep they started doing acrobatics over the fence.  Apparently my mind was bored with the simple run up and jump and so the sheep started somersaulting and floating (and one even attempted a back-flip - it didn't work out) over the fence.

And then I started composing this blog post in my head.  Seriously, blogging has started to take over my life now.  I think about it constantly (do all bloggers have this problem?) as I see it as part of my writing; and as I said earlier, some of my best ideas come at night.  I refused to give in and write this post at 1am, instead hoping that I would be able to remember it (and for once, I obviously did).

Eventually I did get to sleep (only to be woken by my housemate coming home at 7am).  But, the fact of the matter is, that no matter what I try (and I've tried a lot of sleeping techniques) I still have to go through this every night.

Do you have problems getting to sleep?  Anything you've tried that actually works for you?