I came home last night and fell asleep at around quarter till six. I didn’t wake up until some time around eleven.
I hate sleeping while the sun is up. Back in my heyday, when I wasn’t addicted to caffeine, and never actually drank it, I would fall asleep by ten p.m., and be up with no alarm clock by six the next morning. No wasted time there, and I was always awake and alert. I never felt exhausted, worn out, weak or any other symptoms of fatigue. I never had problems sleeping in those days. It wasn’t until I started working full time that I switched from water and Sprite to Diet Coke, and eventually to Coke and Mountain Dew. That’s when my problems began.
If I sleep the evening away and get up at eleven, I’m screwed. There’s no way I can get back to sleep at that point. I’ve already gotten about as much rest as I typically allow myself to get in a night, so I feel like I should just stay up and do something. Usually, it’s video editing. There’s no video for me to edit right now, though. So my drug of choice is World of Warcraft.
This sleeping arrangement doesn’t balance out, though. As the night wears on, I start feeling tired. Really tired. The kind of tired you get when you sleep for five hours, then get up, and don’t have any caffeine, a shower, or anything else you’d usually associate with waking up. So, I end up going back to bed around one or two a.m. I lay there, tossing and turning, waking up every thirty minutes, wondering if I should just give up and shower, or if I should roll over and go back to sleep. I’ll keep this up until my alarm goes off, and it’s no longer an issue.
I spend the rest of the day in a sort of haze. Not quite awake, not quite asleep. Feeling like I’m not really where I am, not really doing what I’m doing, disconnected from a reality that barely acknowledges my presence. I feel like this tenuous link to the world is maintained only by drinking caffeinated soda. Lots of it. Caffeinated anything, really. If I could wear caffeinated clothes, I’d have a wardrobe of nothing but.
When I’m not at work, I’m at home, doing only what I must to survive. A single sandwich per day for food, a glass of juice or two to quench my thirst, a single load of laundry with enough clothes to last through a work week. All responsibilities that are not in my critical path fall to the wayside. Bills go unpaid until I’m threatened. Dishes and glasses go unwashed until the ants come. Loose change and dollar bills pile up all over the desk and floor, transferred from my pockets to whereever they land.
Ambition is a dream I’m desperately trying to wake up from.
Tags: Miscellaneous