Just got home from the battle of the bands. They're not releasing any results on who made it into the finals until after the remaining preliminary round, which is next week. There were a few entries that qualified as "also rans," but there were also some really good performances. I'm pretty sure the set I picked to play wasn't quite strong enough to get me into the advancing three, because there was one really phenomenal singer who went up after I did and knocked her set out of the park. If I'd known I would be up against someone with her voice, I would have picked at least one of my more difficult songs to show off more of my own range. Oh well, live and learn.
sleeping pills are a bad idea.
-don't do anything in your bed except sleep
-try to only be in the dark when you're sleeping
-if you have problems with waking once you go to sleep, don't do anything when you wake up (especially eat)
-don't worry about going to sleep, worse comes to worse you'll lay in bed awake all night and it'll be easy to fall asleep the next
-don't drink anything caffeinated you dummy!
Having a routine also helps, as does taking a warm/hot shower one to two hours before your target bed time. Personally, my sleep cycle gets so screwed up sometimes that I can only get to sleep with the lights on. I also find that watching movies or concert dvd's can help, but it has to be something that is pretty easy to veg out to, since the whole point is to distract your brain long enough to keep you from thinking about how hard you're trying to go to sleep.
One last trick that works for me every now and then is a change of venue. Even though I have my routine set and do everything else "right," sometimes I just get too restless to sleep in the bed. If I put a sleeping bag or a nice thick comforter on the floor and sprawl out for a while, especially if done in conjunction with the movie/dvd method from above, I'll drop off in almost no time. When I wake up, sometimes a few minutes to a couple of hours later, I can transfer back to the bed and be out by the time my head hits the pillow.