The Sheep Counting Myth

My insomnia as of late has peaked to the very early hours of the morning, and it is beginning to worry me as I am nearing the return to university after my long winter break. 

This is worrying me to the extent that I have tried new ways to fall asleep, such as the stereotypical one that most parents have actually used on their children: counting sheep. I lay there at 3am, my room pitch black, my phone and books well out of reach, covered up to my chin in my warm blankets, my eyes closed tightly. I then imagined a wooden fence high enough to still allow for sheep to be able to comfortably jump out of their entrapment, and low enough for them to be able to land without harming their little kneecaps and ankles. And away they went, grey fluffy sheep after grey fluffy sheep. And they kept going. 

In fact, they went on for hours. And I counted them one by one. I did not feel at all tired. In fact, instead, I got to thinking who thought of this fallible technique in the first place. I wanted to drop a load of sheep on their head.

The main reference that I found to 'counting sheep as a means of attaining sleep' was, according to Wikipedia, found in Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy, dating back to 1832. The quote is as follows:

"It was a sight of monotony to behold one sheep after another follow the
adventurous one, each in turn placing its fore-feet on the breach in the fence,
bringing up its hind legs after it, looking around for an instant from the summit,
and then making the plunge into the dry ditch, tufted with locks of wool...
the recollection of the scene of transit served to send the landowner to sleep
more than once, when occurring at the end of the train of anxious thoughts which
had kept him awake." (p. 355–356)

Are sheep really that boring? Do they exist to lull us to sleep with the imagining of their fluffy woollen bodies? What if one'a imagination permits the sheep that they are imagining to call out, sending one back to being wide awake from the sudden noise of the sheep? 

Sheep aside, I cannot actually recall anything that constitutes as my last thought as I fall asleep. All I am aware of is that each time that I try to envision something, I am distracted from falling asleep. Sometimes I even try envisioning darkness, but when my mind is alerted of my attempt I wake up again. I am quite certain that I do think of something right before I sleep, but I can never remember what it is. 

I suppose Martineau is not to blame for this myth. She may have just suggested it and never intended to advise it. Cartoons are to blame for this. I remember distinctly an episode from the Looney Toons wherein sheep counting was displayed. There are a lot of cartoons that showed me this, actually, and I suppose I was falsely led to believe them. 

When I sleep tonight, I will try not to imagine Martineau sanding beside sheep jumping over a fence, sticking her two middle fingers up at me and laughing menacingly. Because I know for certain that that would not lull me to sleep.