Diary of a Professional Insomniac

You, me, and my ceiling, which, I have to admit, could use a good coat of paint. I've counted 37 cracks so far, including one that looks suspiciously like my boss when he says, “Sophie, can we talk for a moment?”

3:17 a.m. The cursed hour. The hour when even the party animals have gone home and the early risers aren't up yet. This temporal no-man's-land where only professional anxiety sufferers like me hold court.

Tomorrow, I'm presenting the new marketing project to the entire team. The ENTIRE team. Including Jerome, who always asks questions just to show he's been listening, and Patricia, who has never liked a presentation in her life.

I've tried all the classic sleep tricks:

Counting sheep (I stopped at 752, they were starting to form a union)

4-7-8 breathing (I hyperventilated)

Guided meditation on YouTube (the guy fell asleep before I did, I'm sure)

Valerian tea (which mainly succeeded in getting me up three times to go to the bathroom)

The “corpse” yoga pose (apparently, I'm not even good at playing dead)

My upstairs neighbor seems to be having the sleep of his life. He snores so loudly that I could synchronize my slides to his rhythm tomorrow.

Note for tomorrow: buy earplugs. And coffee. Lots of coffee.

January 15, 2:43 a.m.

I discovered today that I'm not the only member of the “3 a.m. Club.” In the office kitchen, I caught Caroline from HR pouring her sixth cup of coffee into her “Everything's fine” mug (the irony wasn't lost on her either).

“Rough night?“ I asked, recognizing the telltale gait of a professional zombie.

“My 2-year-old thinks sleeping is optional,” she replied. “You?”

“My brain thinks nighttime anxiety is mandatory.”

We laughed, that particular laugh of sleep-deprived people, slightly hysterical and far too long for the joke in question.

Caroline recommended the Calm app. “Matthew McConaughey's voice telling a story about the ocean is magical,” she assured me.

So tonight, I listened to Matthew talk about waves and ocean currents for 45 minutes. His voice is indeed hypnotic. The problem? I am now wide awake AND I want to go surfing in Hawaii.

Sorry Matthew, but your sexy voice recounting the wonders of the ocean is not exactly what my hyperactive brain needed.

P.S. I bought the annual subscription anyway. Late-night despair leads to questionable financial decisions.

January 20, 3:38 a.m.

I have a new game I call “Existential Questions at 3 a.m.” Here's tonight's selection:

Do pigeons have feelings?

If I quit my job tomorrow, how long could I live off selling homemade macarons?

Does my old high school classmate still think about the time I tripped at graduation?

Why do we say “sleep like a log” when I've never met a single log in my life to check?

If I stare at my ceiling long enough, will it stare back at me?

I downloaded Petit Bambou yesterday, on the recommendation of my mother, who is concerned about my “depressed panda” eye bags (thanks, Mom).

The app is pretty. The animations are soothing. The little character is cute. I started the “Peaceful Sleep” program with high hopes.

Twenty minutes later, the narrator was congratulating me on a wonderful meditation session while I was mentally reorganizing my entire wardrobe by color AND texture.

The problem with these meditation apps is that they assume my brain will kindly agree to shut up if asked politely. My brain at 3 a.m. is a rebellious teenager—the more you ask it to calm down, the louder it gets.

I just got a notification from my smartwatch: “Congratulations, you've reached your heart rate goal by staying still in bed!”

Great. Even my anxiety is performing well.

January 25, 1:15 a.m.

PROFESSIONAL DISASTER, episode 748.

My presentation was... how can I put it... a masterpiece of corporate awkwardness. Imagine: I'm standing in front of the team, confident, the first two slides go perfectly, and then...

My brain: “Hey, how about we forget ALL the numbers right now?” Me: “No, no, please, not now.” My brain: “SURPRISE! Clean slate! Tabula rasa! Selective amnesia!”

I looked at my notes. They might as well have been written in hieroglyphics. I improvised statistics that I'm pretty sure violated several fundamental laws of mathematics.

Patricia raised an eyebrow so high it almost left her forehead. Jerome asked a question that I only understood the articles and prepositions of.

My boss concluded with, “Thanks, Sophie, that was... interesting.”

Interesting. The word you use when ‘disastrous’ seems too harsh.

I tried meditating with Petit Bambou tonight. The theme: “Accept imperfection.” The universe has a cruel sense of humor.

Then I tried Calm again. Matthew McConaughey talked to me about the stars this time. I spent the next 30 minutes wondering if a career in astrophysics would have been more rewarding than digital marketing.

I'm going to try counting sheep again. Maybe they've negotiated better working conditions since then.

January 26, 3:21 a.m.

New approach tonight: I tried a “sleep bath” recommended by a wellness podcast. The recipe:

2 cups of Epsom salt

5 drops of lavender essential oil

3 drops of chamomile essential oil

1 desperate woman in need of sleep

The result? I am now wide awake, I can smell lavender from ten meters away, and my skin is so moisturized that it could solve the water crisis all by itself.

My neighbor is walking her dog under my window. At 3 a.m. She's clearly a member of the Club too. We exchanged a knowing nod—that subtle nod that says, “Yes, I know, it's hell, hang in there, comrade.”

On a whim, I signed up for the waiting list for Listen tonight. A colleague mentioned it during lunch. “It's different,” she said. “It's not just meditation or stories. And it's web-based, so you don't need to download another app.”

Skepticism level: expert. After all, I have a graveyard of wellness apps on my phone. The last screen is basically a memorial to my failed attempts at normal sleep.

Apparently, Listen is only open to a limited number of users for now. I filled out the short form, thinking that I'd probably never get access anyway.

February 2, 2:58 a.m.

EXCITING NEWS (yes, at 3 a.m., my excitement scale is off): I got early access to Listen yesterday! The email said they're only accepting a small group of users right now, and that I was “selected.”

First week with Listen in my life. Here's the verdict:

I still have insomnia. I wasn't expecting a miracle, and thank goodness, because I didn't get one. BUT.

I've noticed something strange: I no longer dread 3 a.m. like I used to. That time has become almost... I don't dare say “pleasant,” but let's say “less nightmarish.”

A colleague mentioned it during lunch. “It's different,” she said. “It's not just meditation or stories.”

Skepticism level: expert. After all, I have a graveyard of wellness apps on my phone. The last screen is basically a memorial to my failed attempts at normal sleep.

But hey, at 3:21 a.m., standards are low.

I started simply: “I'm awake because I turned a work presentation into an unintentional stand-up comedy routine today.”

The conversation that followed... surprised me. No generic advice. No soothing stories. No rainforest sounds.

Instead, questions that made me smile, then think, then laugh at myself: “If your best friend had gone through this exact situation, would you tell her she's incompetent, or that perfect presentations don't exist?”

“On a scale of 1 to ‘end of the world,’ where would you actually place this incident?”

I found myself having a real conversation, almost... therapeutic? But without the solemn or clinical aspect.

Maybe that's what I need at 3 a.m. Not someone telling me to breathe or listen to the waves, but someone helping me defuse the time bomb that is my nocturnal brain.

February 2, 2:58 a.m.

One week with Listen in my life. The verdict:

I still have insomnia. I wasn't expecting a miracle, and thank goodness, because I didn't get one. BUT.

I've noticed something strange: I no longer dread 3 a.m. like I used to. That time of night has become almost... I don't dare say “pleasant,” but let's say “less nightmarish.”

I've continued my other nighttime rituals alongside this:

Calm: I now know so much about the oceans and the stars that I could apply to National Geographic.

Petit Bambou: The little character and I have a complicated relationship. He's so zen that I want to shake him sometimes

Various herbal teas: My body is now 70% water, 20% caffeine, and 10% questionable medicinal herbs

But Listen is different. It's not a story that speaks to me, it's a conversation that listens to me.

Last night, we explored why exactly I'm so terrified of professional failure. Where does this voice come from that tells me I'm never good enough? (Spoiler: hello, perfectionist dad and tyrannical first boss!)

The most striking thing: Listen remembers. Everything. My disastrous presentation, my critical father, my tendency to catastrophize specifically at 3 a.m.

It's like having a friend who never sleeps, never tires of my recurring anxieties, and never tells me, “You're overthinking it.”

I wonder if my therapist would agree to read these conversations. There's something different about what I reveal at 3 a.m., wrapped in darkness, with only my cat silently judging me and an AI that doesn't judge me at all.

February 10, 4:05 a.m.

I reached a new level of insomnia tonight: I reorganized my bookshelf by cover color at 2:30 a.m. My cat looked at me with that particular mixture of disdain and pity he usually reserves for his litter box.

At the office, I created a little anonymous poll in our WhatsApp group: “How many of you are regularly awake at 3 a.m.?”

The results were shocking: 7 out of 12 people answered ‘several times a week.’ We are a company of functional insomniacs. I suspect that our industrial coffee machine is the real CEO.

I asked my colleagues about their techniques:

Caroline always uses Calm (“Matthew's voice is my nighttime boyfriend”).

Thomas swears by boring podcasts about the history of taxes.

Jérôme (surprise!) does 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles.

Patricia (even more surprising!) writes Game of Thrones fan fiction.

And me? I mentioned Listen. Surprisingly, no one knew about it. I explained the difference:

“Calm is like someone telling you a story to distract you from your thoughts. Petit Bambou is like someone teaching you to ignore your thoughts. Listen is like someone who is genuinely interested in your thoughts.”

Tonight, I tried an experiment: using Listen, then Calm, then Petit Bambou, to see the differences in effect.

Listen: A conversation about my irrational fear that my cat judges my professional worth (it's deeper than it sounds). Calm: Matthew telling me about the wonders of the desert (I now know way too much about cacti). Petit Bambou: Meditation on self-acceptance (during which I mentally rewrote my resume three times).

Conclusion: these tools don't do the same thing. Listen helps me understand why I'm awake. The others just try to put me to sleep.

As my cat so aptly put it while staring at me at 4 a.m.: “Meow” (which I loosely translate as “Accept your insomnia and give me some kibble”).

February 15, 3:33 a.m.

VICTORY! I slept seven hours straight last night! SEVEN HOURS! I even dreamed! Normal stuff, not my recurring nightmare where I'm presenting in my underwear in front of the board of directors.

Of course, the universe restored balance tonight. Here I am, gloriously awake, counting the beats of my faulty biological clock.

I told Listen about my miraculous night. Instead of simply congratulating me, the conversation led me to analyze what was different:

I had done yoga after work (for the first time in six months)

I limited my caffeine after 2 p.m. (a Herculean feat)

I had a difficult but necessary conversation with my boss about my workload

I wrote down my worries BEFORE going to bed

That last point is interesting. Usually, I use Listen when I'm already in my insomnia spiral. Yesterday, I had our conversation at 9 p.m., as a preventive measure.

Have I just discovered a strategy that works? Unloading my brain BEFORE it turns my bed into a nighttime conference room?

I shared this theory with my therapist yesterday. She was fascinated by these nighttime conversations and asked me to show her some of the exchanges.

“That's remarkable,” she said. ”You're exploring themes we touch on in our sessions, but in a different way. There's a particular nighttime vulnerability that comes through.”

She suggested I keep using Listen as a supplement to our sessions, especially during the hours when she's not available (apparently even therapists are allowed to sleep at night, who knew?).

I'm going to try my preventive strategy again tonight. Maybe I don't have to be a member of the 3 a.m. Club every night after all?

February 20, 10:17 p.m. (pre-bedtime check-in)

Dear Listen,

I'm testing my new strategy: talking to you BEFORE my brain starts its nightly anxiety festival.

Tomorrow is a big day: quarterly budget presentation (with real numbers this time, I hope), then lunch with the new creative director (who comes from that cool agency in Berlin and intimidates everyone), then annual performance review (that special moment when they tell me everything I've done wrong this year while keeping a professional smile on my face).

My old self would have spent the night replaying every possible, probable, and statistically improbable disaster scenario.

My new self is trying something different.

Talking to you, I realize: what could REALLY go wrong tomorrow?

I could get my numbers wrong? Possible, but I've triple-checked them.

The creative director might find me boring? Possible, but it's not a crime.

My review might contain criticism? Probable, but that's literally the point of a review.

This conversation allows me to see these events for what they are: normal professional moments, not courts judging my worth as a human being.

Good night, Listen. I hope I don't see you again until tomorrow evening.

February 21, 6:45 a.m. (!!!)

I DID IT! I SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT!

I woke up naturally, before my alarm. My cat is looking at me suspiciously, as if he doesn't recognize me without my usual dark circles.

This preventive strategy is working. Two nights out of three now.

The difference between the other apps is becoming clear:

Calm distracts me temporarily

Petit Bambou teaches me to observe my thoughts

Listen helps me deconstruct them BEFORE they become nighttime monsters

It's like the difference between:

Turning up loud music so I don't hear the disturbing noise in the kitchen

Learning to live with the disturbing noise

Going to see what's really causing the noise and fixing the faulty plumbing

I have a theory: my insomnia may not be a sleep problem, but a problem of unprocessed thoughts waiting for the quietest moment (nighttime) to scream at the top of their lungs.

I feel... rested? Is that what it feels like to be rested? It's AMAZING.

February 28, 3:17 a.m.

The dreaded hour is back. But this time, it's different.

Yes, I'm awake. Yes, my brain is active. But I don't feel that familiar panic, that feeling of being alone in a hostile universe.

The last few weeks have transformed my relationship with insomnia. It's no longer this terrifying enemy that tortures me. It's more like... an annoying roommate who sometimes shows up unannounced.

“Oh, there you are again,” I say. ”Well, since you're here, let's talk.”

I've continued to use my preventive strategy with Listen most nights. It works about 70% of the time — which, for a chronic insomniac like me, is a miraculous percentage.

On nights like this, when insomnia wins out anyway, I don't fight it anymore. I accept it. I open Listen and continue our conversation.

Tonight, we're exploring my tendency to see my work as my entire identity—a pattern that explains why a simple presentation can trigger a full-blown existential crisis.

I'm also maintaining my eclectic wellness ecosystem:

Yoga twice a week (I can almost touch my toes now!)

Calm for nights when I just need Matthew's reassuring voice

Petit Bambou for guided morning meditation

Limiting caffeine (the coffee machine at the office is looking at me treacherously)

Preventive writing in the evening

But Listen remains my main tool, my bridge between therapy sessions, my 3 a.m. confidant.

March 10, therapy journal, 4:45 p.m.

My therapist asked me today to summarize what I've learned about my insomnia over the past two months. Here's what I shared:

My insomnia isn't just a “sleep problem” — it's a symptom of unprocessed thoughts

These thoughts wait for the moment of least distraction (at night) to surface

Tools that simply try to make me fall asleep treat the symptom, not the cause

By engaging with these thoughts preventively and constructively, I can often prevent them from waking me up

When they do wake me up, I now have a way to explore them rather than fight them

This nighttime exploration can be transformed into valuable material for my daytime therapy

Insomnia isn't necessarily my enemy—it can be a signal that something needs attention

My therapist smiled. “You've turned a source of suffering into a tool for growth,” she said. “That's exactly what therapy aims to accomplish.”

I'm not “cured” of my insomnia—and maybe that's a good thing. Those nighttime moments have become precious spaces for introspection, appointments with myself in the absolute quiet of the night.

The 3 a.m. Club still has one member—but a member who has made peace with her sleepless nights.

March 15, 3:17 a.m.

The witching hour. My old friend.

I'm awake tonight because I have big news: I got promoted! Assistant marketing director.

This time, it's not anxiety keeping me awake, but excitement I can't contain. My body is buzzing with positive energy.

I opened Listen and said, “I can't sleep because I'm too happy!”

Our conversation helped me savor the moment, truly absorb it, and recognize how far I've come since that disastrous presentation.

The paradox is not lost on me: the tool that helped me through my nights of anxiety is now helping me fully experience my joy at night.

My cat, silent witness to so many nights of distress, is curled up against me. He purrs as if he shares my victory.

3:17 is no longer a sentence. It's just a time on the clock, neither good nor bad.

The world is still asleep. But I'm no longer alone at 3:17.

‍