The World's Worst Insomniac

Even though my brief time at the call centre ended because of my sleep issues, it was not the end of the road for me. I simply picked up where I left off with the plans I had before accepting the role.

The first thing I did was attend an interview at a criminal justice organisation. My interview was for a volunteer role which involves calling people on home detention, checking in on their wellbeing, and seeing whether they need any extra support.

My interest in this program came from the difficulties I’ve had having a criminal conviction for using my mobile phone while driving. I thought to myself: if I have so much trouble over something like using a mobile phone behind the wheel, where there was no accident or damage done, I can’t imagine how much trouble other offenders have with police checks. It must be incredibly difficult to gain employment where a check is required.

Just the other day I applied for a job on Seek for a part-time rostering role within a healthcare environment, and one of the first questions they asked was: “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?” There was no room to explain or provide details — it was simply yes or no. I ticked yes, and I never heard back from them.

So, in relation to calling people on home detention, I know some of them may have done some really bad things, but I’m not there to judge. I just want to sit with them where they are at and follow the process and procedures in place for the role.

I applied for a job with the Census as a Field Officer. The role involves walking the streets and knocking on the doors of people who are having trouble doing the census, who haven’t completed it, or who have questions. As I understand it, the census is mostly done online this year, but there must still be a lot of work where a human is required.

On the day of my interview with the criminal justice organisation, I received a message from the Census advising me that my application had progressed to management, who will shortlist candidates for the Field Officer roles.

I am not religious in a traditional sense, but I am so excited about the possibility of working for the Census because a census is the reason Jesus was born in Bethlehem and not Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph were living.

Essentially, there was a decree from Caesar Augustus that “all the world should be taxed.” In older English translations of the Bible, the phrase “should be taxed” does not simply mean paying money. It refers to people being registered or enrolled by the Roman authorities as part of a census. Rome wanted records of people, for taxation, administration, and military purposes, and people had to register according to the rules of the census.

After the decree, Joseph travelled from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea because he was “of the house and line of David.” Bethlehem was the city associated with David’s lineage, and according to the Gospel account Joseph was required to register there for the census. Mary travelled with him while pregnant with Jesus and, as the story goes, gave birth to the king of the world in a manger, in an old stable surrounded by beasts of burden.

A census is an act of empire, and I find the idea of being part of such an ancient tradition thrilling. It is about counting people, registering them, taxing them, and understanding power. But more than that, it is about the idea that every single person should be counted, whatever the cost. It is about understanding both the power of power and the power of powerlessness.

I’m going back to art school in August, like I had initially planned, and I really have my fingers crossed that somehow, I am selected to serve in the Census so I can work for a while alongside my studies.

Something I find quite fitting is that there was a census in 2011 when I was living in Sydney. I felt so humiliated and defeated by my life and by the world I was living in that I still remember the census worker dropping the form off at my apartment.

I didn’t fill it in initially. Then they came back and asked whether I had completed it, and I said no. Later, they came back again and simply took the form away.

I didn’t count. I didn’t even count as a person.

At the time, I found that incredibly appropriate because I didn’t feel like a person either.

But that was a very long time ago. Now, I’m going back to uni, I’ve potentially got a short-term job with the Census, and I have an induction this coming week with the criminal justice organisation, which means I can start volunteering and making calls as soon as that’s done.

I also feel like it was probably for the best that I wasn’t able to make the call centre role work. If my sleep had been okay and I had managed to settle in properly, I could have stayed there for years and completely abandoned my dream of producing conceptual epistolary artwork.

In saying that, though, I need to be realistic. I will be 45 this year, and contemporary art is heavily driven by youth and young emerging artists. It is going to take extra work to get ahead, but I think I’ve said it before: I don’t trust my ability with anything in this world apart from my ability to create blueprints for conceptual artwork. And I owe it to myself to explore that.

I think what happened at the call centre really shocked me into some existential thinking, and I started reflecting on my life. I’m now in my second act, and in my first act I didn’t achieve one thing I had dreamed of doing. But the reality is, how could I? I wanted to be a journalist, theologian, visual artist, physicist, writer, social worker, lawyer, and God knows how many other professions. I wanted to get married, have children, or at least have a loving partner, a nice house, a decent car, and travel the world. All of those things slowly became null and void.

I have done some travelling, and I want to do more. Really, if it comes down to it, that’s all I truly want to do: travel the world, mostly Europe, I think. It is so rich in history, and those beautiful fairytale villages really appeal to me.

So, if someone asked me point blank what I really want to do with the remainder of my life, I would say this: I want to have enough money to live comfortably.

I want to travel, and the only other thing I have ever really wanted in this world — more than children, partners, travel, or even money itself — is to do something to help the Palestinians.

I remember vividly when I first started to understand the history and current circumstances of the Palestinians. I know there are horrific things happening all over the world — in Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere — but there is something about the Palestinian situation that I find particularly cruel. Much of the world is willing to recognise the existence of a Palestinian state and acknowledge the suffering of the Palestinian people, yet when it matters most, we all seem to look the other way.

Once I had clarity about the violence, humiliation, harassment, apartheid, genocide and the treatment of Palestinians as second class citizens, I said to myself that I did not want to leave this world without helping them in some small way.

I go to rallies, and I have had two letters about Palestinian issues published in The Advertiser, but sometimes I think there is so much hatred and so much unhelpful rhetoric on both sides that certain forms of activism can become counterproductive.

I’ve decided that I am going to establish myself as a neutral conceptual epistolary artist and then, if I ever gain a platform — even if it’s tiny — I will use it to speak out for the Palestinians in a reasonable, rational, and informative way.

Something I think about a lot is how Israel often defends its actions by describing itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. First of all, it is generally classified as a flawed democracy rather than a full liberal democracy. But then, more recently, when members of the Knesset supported legislation proposing the death penalty specifically for Palestinian terrorists and not Jewish ones, some supporters justified it by pointing out that the death penalty exists across much of the Middle East. So which is it? Is Israel fundamentally different from its Middle Eastern neighbours, or is it not?

I am not an educated woman, despite my many attempts to obtain a degree, but I have done a bit of reading about democracies — in particular the Economist Democracy Index, which is published by The Economist Group. The index measures the quality of democracy across the world and separates countries into one of four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes.

Up to 2024, there were only 25 full democracies in the world, with Australia being one of them, and 46 flawed democracies — meaning there are only 71 democracies in total in the world. I find that mind blowing.

This is something I have become very interested in, independent of Israel being classified as a flawed democracy. Over the past few days, I have considered the possibility that I have the potential to undertake an enormous conceptual epistolary artwork project, and I came to the idea that I am going to write to each politician in the parliaments of all 71 democracies in the world. I want to ask them what being an elected member within a democracy means to them.

I am going to learn how to make my own picture frames, bind my own books, and create something which is informative, useful, and potentially of interest to anyone interested in democracies.

I understand that this is going to cost a huge amount of money. Potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars. But I have decided to start with two countries: first, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, which has 650 members, and the National Diet of Japan, which has 465 members in the House of Representatives and 248 members in the House of Councillors.

I am going to exhibit the work as I go and hopefully obtain grants along the way to help complete it.

I love the idea of creating a collection of all the democracies in the world. I do not want the project to be controversial or focused on pointing out what is undemocratic about particular countries. I want it to be as simple as it is complicated.

It’s 3:39am on Sunday, 24 May. I’ve got the heater on and it’s almost too hot, but if I turn it off then it will be too cold.

After staying up all night, my favourite time of the morning is when it hits 5:00am. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s when I feel safe. I hate being awake alone overnight in this house. I literally jump every time I hear something, and that’s another reason I like having the heater on because it makes a bit of noise. It distracts me from the things that go bump in the night. I also find that silence can be terrifying.

When I’m awake like this, I sometimes try to remember my life before I became what is probably the world’s worst insomniac. I remember the feeling of going to bed at around 10:00 or 11:00pm and, even if I couldn’t get to sleep straight away, there was pretty much a guarantee that at some point I would drift off.

Now, if I went to bed at 10:00 or 11:00pm, I could literally lie there for ten or twelve hours, and that is painful because it’s just me and my thoughts.

I remember when I was seeing this sleep psychologist who was honestly the nicest woman, but not particularly helpful to me. One day, when my sleep corrected itself for a little while, I wrote her an email saying how people take for granted things like being awake for breakfast or lunch. I told her how happy I was to be able to enjoy those things without that heavy feeling of not having slept.

The best time for me to do anything in the real world is first thing in the morning. I’m still awake from the night before and I’ve got that last bit of energy left in me to push through. The afternoon can be hard, and sometimes I just can’t make it through at all, like when I tried to manage that job at the call centre. I honestly think if I had my days back, I could do anything.

As things have been emotionally volatile lately with the criminal conviction and then the job situation, I’ve been trying to think of ways to make sure I don’t let it get to me too much. So, I decided to join the gym.

I’ve been a member of gyms before, and the one I joined is a big one that is open 24 hours a day. I want to go there at times like this in the morning, but to be honest I’m scared of anyone who might be lurking around the house at this hour, and you never really know what could happen at the gym when it’s unstaffed. They pride themselves on their CCTV, which is good after the fact, but I don’t think it is always much of a deterrent.

So, what do I do at night when everybody else is sleeping and I feel like I am the only person awake?

I watch a lot of YouTube. I watch Al Jazeera, a lot of Piers Morgan, who I have actually learnt a lot from, and I also watch Mehdi Hasan and his news channel Zeteo.

Another thing I do at night is read articles and blogs on the internet. There is a left leaning Israeli newspaper called Haaretz which I read a lot, and I think it is genuinely good quality journalism.

I’ve got my volunteer calls this morning. I’ve written before about my volunteering before but just to repeat myself, I essentially call older vulnerable Australians in the morning as part of a welfare check service. If they don’t answer my call three times, there is a process that takes place and then family members or the police follow up to make sure they are okay.

I’ve been doing this for just over a year now, and I have really come to know my regulars. I speak to some longer than others, but I’ve worked out a rhythm with my calls.

It’s funny — the clients always say how grateful they are for the calls and how much of a help the calls are to them, and I am so grateful for them too. It’s a real honour to ring them first thing in the morning and say hi. I love it.

I know it sounds like there is no urgency in me to fix my insomnia, and in many ways that’s true. I am stuck in this cycle, and I know the limits of it, so I’ve sort of learnt to work within them.

A lot of it comes down to how much sleep deprivation a person can actually tolerate.

I’m not going to put my head on a pillow one night and magically return to a conventional sleep cycle. But I do wonder whether that will ever be an option for me again.

A Cruel Sense Of Humour

On 30 April, I had a letter to the editor published in the Advertiser. It was in response to an opinion piece Alexander Downer wrote, talking about how people who “booed” during a Welcome to Country ceremony on Anzac Day were rude, but not racist. I had planned to stop being one of those people with an opinion on everything, but I couldn’t just sit back and say nothing in response to what Mr Downer said, which I personally found offensive. Below is a copy of my letter.

In case you were unable to read the words, I’ve pasted them below.

Dear Editor,

In his opinion piece “Left wing activists can learn from rude Anzac Day boos,” Alexander Downer argues that critics are wrong to interpret objections to Welcome to Country ceremonies as racism. While it is true that not all discomfort is rooted in prejudice, his framing reduces these ceremonies to political gestures rather than recognising their deeper purpose.

Welcome to Country is not a lecture or an imposition. It is a simple act of acknowledgment — a recognition that this land has a history that did not begin in 1788. Repetition does not make it intrusive; it makes it normal.

Mr Downer suggests that many Australians reject the language of invasion and national shame. But not everyone feels that way. For many, acknowledging that colonisation brought dispossession and conflict does not mean condemning modern Australia; it is simply an acceptance that the nation’s story is both good and bad at the same time.

Kind regards,

Me

That is the second letter I have recently written in response to Mr Downer’s articles. The first time I wrote, I felt a bit stupid afterwards, like I was trying to suggest I knew more than the former Foreign Minister of the country. This is, of course, ridiculous, as he has a lifetime’s worth of high-level experience in foreign affairs and life itself. But this article he wrote about Welcome to Country ceremonies made me realise that just because he has held high-level positions, and I am just a rank-and-file member of the public, doesn’t mean that he is necessarily right and that I am automatically wrong.

I have a further opinion on this particular article which I won’t put into writing anywhere. I celebrate Welcome to Country ceremonies, and I will continue to celebrate them and welcome any opportunity I am given to learn about Indigenous history and culture. I would say to anybody who doesn’t celebrate them that we should recognise this very special form of acknowledgment as simply the very least we can do in light of our colonial history and the legacy that continues to shape the ongoing racism and inequality experienced by our First Nations peoples.

It is an unfortunate coincidence that my next topic is my Aboriginal deaths in custody project, which involved me writing to all members of the federal parliament asking for their opinion on the issue and whether they believe the federal government is doing enough to reduce Aboriginal deaths in custody. There are 150 members of the House of Representatives and 76 senators, making a total of 226 federal parliamentarians. I actually ended up sending around 300 letters because I sent two letters to ministers — one to their electorate office and one to their ministerial office — consecutively.

It has now been a number of months since I sent those letters, and I have received a total of 11 responses. That is pretty poor indeed. I asked them directly for their personal opinion and, in the majority of cases, I have not received a response. 

Further to the four responses I have already written about, the other people who responded were Senator Larissa Waters, who wrote a one and a half page letter stressing the urgency of the issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody. Then there was Rebecca White, the Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care, Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health and Assistant Minister for Women, who forwarded my initial letter to the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing, and the Director of Partnership and Reforms Section, First Nations Health Division, responded on her behalf.

Penny Wong, Senator for South Australia and Minister for Foreign Affairs, wrote a very brief letter stating that the Government is focused on community led solutions to stop First Nations people coming into contact with the criminal justice system.

Charlotte Walker, also a Senator for South Australia, sent a one page generic type of letter and then Malarndirri McCarthy, Minister for Indigenous Australians, Senator for the Northern Territory and Christmas and Cocos (Keeling) Islands, wrote a one and a half page letter acknowledging it to be a critical issue.

Julian Leeser, Federal Member for Berowra NSW, wrote a detailed letter. This name actually rings a bell to me. I can’t be sure, but I think he was working at the Liberal Party of NSW when I did a temp job there back in 2011. Mr Leeser’s letter talked about how some of the deaths in custody are due to diseases of the circulatory and respiratory systems, such as ischaemic heart disease or cancer. Tragically, others are deaths by suicide.

Finally, my local member for Sturt, Claire Clutterham, wrote back and acknowledged that I had written to other members of parliament. I don’t know how many she knew about, but the acknowledgement was there. She said she had reached out to the Minister for Indigenous Australians to explain to me what the Albanese Government is doing, and I think that was the letter I received from Malarndirri McCarthy. She then went on to share her own personal opinion: that First Nations people dying in custody is unacceptable and that a clear priority of this Government is reducing the incarceration rates of First Nations people.

I have to say I was pretty impressed with Claire. Her office put some time into the response, and she closed the letter by saying, “As your local Member I will continue to advocate on your behalf. I will continue to push for accountability and meaningful progress.” I like a politician who makes you feel listened to and heard, and who is personally passionate about delivering change. I intend to join the Australian Labor Party at some point this year and, when I do, I am going to go and introduce myself to her.

But to the ones who didn’t respond, I am going to write back to them and ask why. I am an epistolary conceptual artist. My instinct tells me that being ignored by almost the entire federal parliament is not the end of this project.

My police check cleared with no disclosable court outcomes and I was notified on Sunday 3 May. It made me feel good that my record was clean and I decided that I really wanted the job, so last week I went ahead and filled in the rest of the onboarding paperwork, ready for me to start this Monday, 11 May.

In the lead up to my first day of work, my mood shifted significantly from my last bleak post, and that’s because everywhere I looked there were flowers — and flowers displayed just as I like them. Below you can see the Mother's Day flower stand out the front of Foodland Norwood. I love flowers in buckets and, as you can see, it’s a big chaotic mess of floral bliss.

For Mother’s Day, I always send Mum flowers, and this year I ordered them from her favourite florist, Blooms. I picked out a beautiful arrangement on their website and assumed they would put the same arrangement together for Mum, but I was very disappointed on Sunday. The colours were the total opposite of what I had ordered, and I was really upset because I pride myself on being able to pick good flowers, but this time I was let down. Mum said she loved them, but I can’t be sure she was telling the truth.

I slept through the morning on Mother’s Day and wasn’t much use to Mum for a while, but by the end of the day I was shocked to discover that my brother hadn’t sent her anything at all. He called her and then sent flowers on Monday, but it was a tiny little bunch in a vase and I don’t understand how he could have sent her something so small.

This isn’t the first time I have seen him send these tiny little things, but why send them at all? If you’re going to send flowers, make it big and make it bold. If you can’t afford flowers, go and pick them from your garden or someone else’s, but in my opinion flowers should only be given if you’re going to do it properly.

You make a statement with the flowers you give, and my brother went to Tynte Flowers for his tiny little arrangement.  They are probably the most well-known florist in Adelaide, and my brother — actually, I will say it was probably his wife — chose the smallest thing they offer. 

On the other hand, I am flat broke and the flowers I sent Mum for Mother’s Day weren’t the biggest I’ve ever sent, but at least they said something. They said: “I literally spent my last penny on you for Mother’s Day.” Below you can see the difference in size between the flowers my brother and I sent.

So now I get to my character defining two days. Mother’s Day, I slept most of the morning. Sunday night I was up all night and starting a new job on the Monday. Before I left the house for the city on Monday morning, I hadn’t slept all night, and I felt like rat shit. I have stayed up all night and then the next day so many times I couldn’t count, but most of that was when I was younger. I am about to turn 45 and I can really feel it.

Monday morning, I was so tired to the point of exhaustion. I was so nervous about the new job and I felt anxious. It was an extremely overwhelming feeling, but I hoped the adrenaline would keep me going. There were 18 other people starting in the call centre on Monday and at 8:30am we were taken up to our training room in the office in the city. It was still so early, but I felt like I was pushing against something. I felt vulnerable, like if I involuntarily fell asleep, I would be completely at the mercy of the other people in the room.

We started with introductions and then there were PowerPoint presentations. During a break, people tried to talk to me and I must have seemed rude, but I could barely speak. I felt it in the pit of my stomach. My eyes felt so heavy — heavier than they had ever felt before. Physically I felt so bad, and all I could focus on was forcing myself to stay awake.

Before lunch, my eyes started closing for a little while longer than they should have every time I blinked. I think the trainer noticed and, in my head, I was thinking I’m just going to have to go and tell her that I can’t do this job and I have to leave.

Then I fantasied about having a brief nap in the back of an Uber while it drove me home to my bed where I could sleep for as long as I wanted. But I pushed through. After lunch we were told we had to walk up the road to another building which was part of the organisation. I thought that this was where my body would shut down completely or I would either die, have a stroke, a heart attack or completely black out. I forced myself to walk down to the other building. I pushed with every single bit of determination I have and forced myself to follow my colleagues and make it to the building, at whatever cost.

I had to stand up for over an hour while we were shown around the other part of the organisation, and I felt like I was having an out of body experience. I somehow made it back to the main office and training room and there wasn’t much time left in the day. I can safely say this was the worst day of my life. I have never felt so physically bad in my entire life. I had a very bad day 13 years ago and I've had days where I have experienced real sleep deprivation before, but those days were nothing compared to this day where I almost lost complete control of my body, and maybe my mind.

I made it to the end of the day but it wasn’t over yet. I had to stay up until 10:00pm and if I didn’t, the same thing would happen the next day because I would wake up early in the morning. So I stayed up and then collapsed into bed. I slept all night and woke up at 6:00am the next morning. I could still feel the exhaustion and effects of the previous day all throughout my body, but other than that I felt surprisingly refreshed. I got up, went to work and had another day of training.

I got home Tuesday night, but my body has a cruel sense of humour and I didn’t sleep the whole night again. The next morning, I felt even worse than I felt on Monday morning and I realised that I would have to quit the job because under no circumstances could I repeat Monday. I simply did not have it in me. I physically could not do it.

So, it wasn’t the criminal conviction that got me in the end, it was my sleep. I called the call centre and told them I had a family emergency the night before, and I have since spoken to them again. I told them I was unable to continue with the training, and they are working out whether they can hold a place for me for the next intake. But the thing is, it’s going to be the same again. I have had this sleep issue for nearly ten years. I have been able to work and study with it, but somehow being a bit older, it is affecting me so much more than it used to.

I feel like, having told the story of how my sleep ruined my employment prospects, it might seem like I am weak or irresponsible to allow this to happen. Maybe the average person could get by allowing their body and mind to be in such a vulnerable state, but for me I’m secretly proud of myself for walking away. I think I have the sheer determination to overcome the physical effects of such deep sleep deprivation, but I also think there is only so much a person can take.