success!

At times, a partial success is nevertheless overpoweringly full.

I have not managed to run or work out yesterday or today, but I slept through that bell!   For the past two weeks and a bit, I've been using a soundscape application, Relax Melodies, and various combos of rain, river, ocean, etc noises; these work during the night but were proving inadequate against the bell.  Then I considered that, since the overtones of the bell actually seem to be the most disturbing part because they buzz against my teeth and skull much more acutely than the base sound, perhaps I needed something to counter these more closely.   Something musical.  Something with a vampiric pitch.

Relax Melodies, even the free version I have, has a few melodies along with the rain and wind and so forth noises.  A few of these seem very unsoporific, especially "Wind Chimes" and "Medieval", but "Zen" and "Melody" seemed promising, so I tried them.  Together.  I also tossed in "River" just to smooth things out a little.  The melodies are very repetitive and so the resulting discordances are rhythmic as well as actually pleasing.  I have been listening to a lot of electronic music recently so this sort of thing is comfortable anyway.

This is the winning triad!

Yesterday, I tried it and I woke up at the bell, but barely, and I went back to sleep.  Today, I woke up halfway through the nap, but this was before the bell had even started.  I went back to sleep quickly and the bell did not wake me up at all.  Now I feel refreshed and optimistic.

I still have to recover and ground my schedule a bit more; this week will be easy.  Maybe I'll run sometime, maybe I'll take more time off.  The most important thing is to become consistent with the naps and with my night sleep.