Sleep Can't Solve It

I'm in the midst of reading the eight books (so-far) upon which the well-regarded television series "The Expanse" is based. I have about 2.1 books left. If you haven't watched it, I recommend it, and the books as well.

Rather than writing about the story itself, I wanted to share one bit of writing that spoke to me particularly.

One of the characters is the head of the UN. As things in the solar system are going about as badly as you can imagine, she's having trouble sleeping:

She didn't sleep anymore, or at least it didn't help when she did.... And sleep was supposed to mean rest. There was no rest anymore. She closed her eyes and her mind stumbled on like it was falling down stairs. Mortality rates and supply windows and security briefings — all the things that filled her so-called waking hours filled her nights as well. Being asleep only meant they lost what little coherence they had. It didn't feel like sleeping. It felt like going mad and catatonic for a few hours and then regaining enough sanity to push through for eighteen or twenty hours more before collapsing into herself again (Babylon's Ashes, page 100).

With everything happening in our country and world today, that's kind of how sleep seems to me. The mind in sleep keeps trying to solve the problems, big and small, that can't be solved. And it's really bad at it, no surprise.