At some point I need to get a decent night's sleep.
I haven't slept well since the Sunday before the Boston
Marathon. Could be the weather, could be
the news events, could just be that's the way I am. But I'm starting to wonder if my body even
remotely understands what it's like to sleep for more than a few hours. Last night I fell asleep, woke up fifteen
minutes later, fell back asleep, woke up an hour later, then two hours later,
then two hours after that, then I woke up ten minutes before the alarm went
off. I pieced together about six hours,
but it didn't feel that way. Felt more
like three.
I don't know if it's middle age, general agida, or that I'm
turning into Winston Churchill (who napped but never actually slept). What it boils down to is that sleeping is a
ridiculous waste of otherwise productive time.
Who the heck wants to get to Heaven asking for a do-over and have God
say, "Look, kid, you slept 1/3 of your flipping life away. Screw!"
The thing is - I like sleeping, I mean, I think I do. I don't know.
It's not something I normally do.
When I go away on vacation, the first few nights at the hotel are spent
walking the floors. People think I'm
exaggerating until they go away with me, and then they never make that mistake
a second time. I had to go away with a
group of people several years ago to deliver a paper at a conference. I warned them all of my bad night-time habit,
but they shooed it off. The next
morning, all I heard was, "Wow, you really DO walk the floors at
night."
WTF. Do you think I make this shit up? Okay, I make some of it up, but I'm not
making this up.
I figure I have about another hour's worth of work to do,
then I'll attempt to go to sleep. I'll
have nightmares almost instantaneously (I hit REM sleep faster than anyone I've
ever met), wake up ten minutes later feeling like I've dreamt for a thousand
years, snooze a little, then start the same cycle all over again.
Wash, rinse, spin,
repeat.
Whatever. The
weekend's coming soon. I can sleep
then. Maybe. But it won't matter because it will be the
weekend. I can sleep in, right? Except it's spring, and the birds start
chirping around 3:00 a.m., and then the train rolls through, and then I can
hear the clock ticking all the way from the downstairs living room, and it's
too hot, and it's too cold, and…
Never mind. I'll just
keep typing this blog post. Even if I
doze off, it'll only be momentary, then I'll be back to my cheery-ass self in
no time.
But first, I think I need a nap.
