Every winter, I pull my 20-pound weighted blanket out of the closet, lug it across the room, and use all my strength to toss it onto the bed. Then every night I get in another mini workout, grunting as I slide under the blanket and pull it up to my chin. Approximately 329 seconds later, after wiggling around like a caterpillar in a cocoon, I slip on my eye mask, and breathe a sigh of contentment. It is finally time to sleep. Hopefully.

As a writer I hate to admit it, but I don’t drink coffee. Or tea. Or anything with caffeine. So if I don’t get a good night’s sleep, I’m up a creek without a paddle. Or in more literary terms, I have a great story idea and no pencil. But sleep has often been elusive for me. My husband so helpfully likes to tell me, “just close your eyes,” as if that basic tenet of life is unknown to me. As if my eyes are the light switch to my brain. Eyes closed, brain off. If only.

I’m one of the lucky ones who often has a tornado of thoughts flying through my mind as soon as I turn off the lights. I feel like Dorothy staring out the window watching cows and nosy neighbors flying by until a window comes and knocks me unconscious. And then, instead of restful sleep, my thoughts just come in technicolor.

Sleep, for me, is fickle. Sometimes the tornado slows down to a gentle breeze, allowing me to drift off halfway through the mental list of worries I’m praying about. Other times it fights me, holding a microphone to every little noise in the house or replaying fifteen-year old conversations where I said something I later realized was stupid. And sometimes it tricks me, allowing me to drift off as soon as my head hits the pillow, only to wake up at two or three a.m. and keeping me awake with thoughts of a mile-long to-do list until the sun comes up.

Like a pilot planning a flight, I need the right conditions for success. For me, those include no noise beyond the hum of a fan, total darkness, my own bed, the right temperature (not too hot, and especially not too cold), and a clear mind. I’m no mathematician, but the odds of all of that is approximately one in 27,556.

There was a time when I could pretty easily function on only a couple hours of sleep. A late night out on a work night? No problem. But now, two kids and over a decade later, I’m in bed by ten, up around 6:30 or 7, and yet yawning all day. Apparently sleep quality trumps sleep quantity.

So I try all the things to improve my sleep. Different pillows. No pillow. Get morning sun to set my circadian rhythm. Exercise. Watch how much I drink (both water and wine). Soak in magnesium baths. Wrestle with the weighted blanket. Read until my eyelids are heavy. Wear an eye mask. Sometimes it all helps. Sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes a child ends up next to me, kneeing me in the back all night, or the dog paces next to my bed.

Maybe one day I’ll find a hack that works 100% of the time and I’ll snooze peacefully. But I think there is one thing that is certain. No matter what I do, I’ll never sleep as well as my husband.