Just two other things to talk about today

One is a totally mind-bending interactive exhibit on the web called Light, courtesy of Getty Images and an artist names Andries Odendaal. Click anywhere on the picture and you will launch an endless journey into images, color, perceptions and emotions. I found it incredibly powerful. I also found it courtesy of Euan Semple’s Obvious blog.

The other is a sleep/nap tool called pzizz that I found via Lifehacker about five or six weeks ago. I downloaded the free trial immediately, but then hadn’t used it because you cannot download the trial naps onto an iPod, and I wanted to try it for sleep, not power-napping. I have chronic insomnia and real problems sleeping as a result of my PTSD and just forty years of not being able to sleep, but dragging my laptop to bed (I have the heaviest Dell known to man, it’s really a desktop replacement, not a laptop) was not really an option. However, last night I did not have some of my medication because I neglected to pick up my refill prior to the closing of the pharmacy. So, it’s 1:46 a.m., I’m playing "Big Money" on the pc and it occurs to me, in desperation, to hook up to pzizz. Since I couldn’t download a nap to my iPod, I hooked up my headphones to my laptop, laid down on the couch in the living room, pointed the laptop away from me and pulled the screen down as far as I could without shutting the laptop off. For the first few minutes of the twenty-minute program, I didn’t think it was working . . . . and then I woke up and realized I had been asleep. I powered down the computer, crawled into bed and promptly fell asleep again. No nightmares, no night terrors. I woke up at about 9 this morning. Sleep like that is the rarest gift I know. Especially non-medicated sleep.

Next week when there is a hole in our budget, I’m buying this software and I highly recommend it. There is a hardware version that might go on my Christmas list, but since the naps can be downloaded to my iPod, which I am currently in love with – that deserves it’s own post, btw – I might not need the hardware version.

p.s. for the skeptical, nobody is paying me to wax on about pzizz. If this software gets me off medication for sleep, I may have fly to London personally just to give Matthew Ashenden a kiss. This is potentially a life-changing product for me.  Ask my husband. He’s had to try to fall asleep to the tv and sleep with a rolling insomniac for over two years now.

Technorati tags: insomnia, pzizz, ptsd