My issues with counting sheep

Sometimes, like all people I believe, I have problems going to sleep. Also, like most people, I have heard of the advice to "count sheep" and imagine them going over a fence and count them as they jump over. This is a relatively simple visual to imagine.

But then I start to question my identity. Who am I? Why am I watching sheep jump over a fence and counting them? Am a farmer who is just watching my flock escape the pen, but not caring enough to try and stop them, and instead I am just counting them? I would imagine that they wouldn't just find a random section of fence to jump over and would have a purpose of jumping. 

Maybe I am an evil farmer who tortures sheep, but have realized my evil ways, so I am watching them escape and just counting to see how many are left to jump? Or maybe I am not too evil of a farmer, but I have no clue how many sheep I have, so to count them I didn't feed them for a few days and put some food in a place they could see in an empty pen adjacent to the one they're in. Since these sheep only like to jump one at a time, I can count them all.

Then, when I'm not having the problem of "who am I?" I have issues on where all these sheep are going. My brain has to know their location and cannot just put them out of the frame like they do in cartoons. I then have problems with sheep piling up and they stop jumping because there is no where for them to land on the other side.

The strange white lumps behind him are more badly drawn sheep.

Then I think that maybe it is just the counting that is supposed to make people fall asleep. It makes sense, it is something we can do without thought, but it can still occupy our minds so that we stop worrying about how we aren't asleep yet and just fall asleep.

The problem I had with that, is that I felt some pride at getting to 100 then 200 and I think to myself "Yeah! When I wake up tomorrow, I'm going to tell everyone how high I counted and they're going to be so impressed!" I have no clue why this thought enters my head, because when I think about it later, it sounds so stupid. So, now I'm trying to get to the highest number possible, but I keep waking myself out of the progress I had made towards sleep because I'll hear myself screwing me out of my high score.

I can't help but wonder how many times I've done it before and didn't catch it. Finally I fall asleep wondering what's the point of life if I cannot even count right and nothing matters anyways. Thanks sheep!