Jet lag feels like a waking dreamstate

Still jet-lagged. For the five nights we’ve been back, I’ve enjoyed a regularly alternating sleep pattern of:

sleeping through the night (9pm-7am)
not sleeping through the night (10pm-3am, one nap 4-5pm)
sleeping (10pm-8am, nap 1-4pm)
not sleeping (11pm-2am, again 7am-noon)
sleeping (11pm-9am).

In between all the sleeping and non-sleeping I’ve looked awake but haven’t always felt it; sometimes my thoughts seem so crisp I think my mind is even clearer than normal, but sooner or later I find myself nodding again into that vague limbo of jet lag. And when sleeping, always, I dream: bright sensory experiences that pluck thoughts and observations from my travels (the feel of my sketchbook pages, a city of skyscrapers viewed from above) and swirl them together with hazier, but still familiar, sensations (feeling in-control in a foreign land, moving through a crowded space, trying a new food I can’t identify). This morning, just before waking, I dreamed I was painting.

This is the first painting I made on our trip: the view out the third-story window of a taro-dumpling shop in Jiufen, on the north coast of Taiwan.

Watercolor sketch of houses and mountains

Sept 24 – Jiufen, Taiwan

Categoriesquick updates, Travel

Tagsdreams, jet lag, Outings, Travel

7 Comments

The Urchins 11 October 2011 at 7:48 am

Beautiful! And I know exactly what you mean about jet lag. It’s such a bizarre experience when your mind can’t seem to convince your body that everything is normal. Every time I think I have jet lag beat, that I’ve devised the best sleeping and adjusting my watch and forcing myself to sleep on the airplane, scheme…. it never works.

Someday I’d like to travel by steamer…. just to avoid the jet lag.

Margaret

1. satsumaart 11 October 2011 at 11:28 am
  
  Hi Margaret! As a not-so-experienced traveler, it’s reassuring to know that I’m not just jet-lagged because I don’t know how to cope with it. 🙂 And I’ve had the same thought as you about the steamer, only since I don’t like traveling by water, I want to take a train. One of the fabled ones perhaps, like the Trans-Siberian or the Orient Express (only the Orient Express is now a luxury line and at nearly $10,000 per person from Paris to Istanbul, I doubt I’ll ever get the chance!).
  
Mo 12 October 2011 at 8:59 am

LOVE the painting! I’ve never had jet-lag, but it certainly sounds surreal. How long does it typically take for your body/mind to return to a normal state?

1. satsumaart 12 October 2011 at 10:15 am
  
  Thanks, Mo! 🙂 I don’t know — this is only the second time I’ve experienced it. Last time I recall bumming around the house in a similar state of “don’t remember anything” for I don’t know how long, maybe a week or two? It’s now been exactly a week since the time we got on the plane to come back from HK, and I’m still a bit out of it, though much more functional than I was a few days ago!
  
walterwsmith3rd 14 October 2011 at 12:47 am

Beautiful painting Lisa, I love the simplicity. I think you certainly have captured the feeling of what was outside the window.

1. satsumaart 15 October 2011 at 3:26 pm
  
  Thanks, Walter! It felt like that to me: misty, presided over by those amazing mountains.
  
World a little skewed | satsumabug.com 11 June 2012 at 5:38 pm

[…] The pills are helping, but I still feel weird… now that I think of it, this feels a lot like jet lag, where I’m mostly fine but the relationship between the vertical and the horizontal seems a […]