Why Am I Awake?
It is now 5:29 in the morning on a Monday, and I can't sleep. I have to be at work in three and a half hours. Any sleep I would achieve between now and then would rate only as a nap, and would, I fear, jeopardize my chances of waking up in time.
Oh, it's not a tragedy. I slept til 11 am this morning, and got a lot of sleep this past holiday weekend. I'll go to bed early tonight, hopefully. But when you're lying awake at (now) 5:32 after four hours of thwarted effort, your internal monologue tends towards either the fruitlessly existential or the maddeningly specific.
Crap I've been thinking about since roughly 1 am:
1. What am I doing with my life? Specifically, where did it all go wrong for me to such a degree that I own such a decrepit, uncomfortable, spring-sprung bed?
2. Why should I complain about my bed? People sleep in worse beds. Many people have no beds at all. Eric, the homeless guy who looks like Jamiroquai with facial lesions who hangs out in front of Kellogg's diner, sleeps in a stairwell, and that's when he's lucky. I should be grateful for any bed at all and go the hell to sleep on the power of that gratitude alone.
3. Ruminating upon the sleeping places of the homeless is not, in and of itself, soporific. I should think about something peaceful, like snow gently falling...onto the sleeping homeless people. I should turn on the TV.
4. Everything on television is enervating, noisy, and wants to sell me something. Fucking Christmas season, with the endless commercials urgently exhorting me to buy as much stuff as possible in the next three-and-a-half weeks. I'm worried about basic necessities. Fuck you, Circuit City.
5. Well, at least I FINALLY got finished with my incredibly frustrating 96-page Holly Hobbie color and activity book freelance project! I closed up freelance-writer-shop at 11:30 tonight, but I can't seem to let go of it. My mind keeps coming up with goddamned coloring book page scenarios, and then resenting the hell out of them.
6. I had my interview for the New School B.A. program on Wednesday and I think it went pretty well, but I mentally re-write my application essays and obsess over the possible reasons I won't get in.
7. I think this bout of insomnia may be PMS. I often get insomnia and meaningless anxiety around this time. Too much information? Well, I can't say this information thrills me either, bucko. So it might be PMS. So what? Knowing it doesn't make me any sleepier.
8. Luckily, work is kind of slow at the library lately, so I can be a little zombified tomorrow without it mattering much. I just gotta get through an eight-hour workday, then buy some Tylenol PM on my way home from work and collapse. My New School application process is done, Holly Hobbie's done, there's nothing too specific hanging over my head right this second, really. Eventually, I will have a good night's sleep. really, everything's cool. Except for the fact that I'm thirty+thousand years old and I don't even own a bed without ginormous craters in it. Also, my government is operating secret torture prisons all over the world, it would seem. Shit.
9. I know. Let's daydream about having enough of something. Like money, or time, or sleep. I'll daydream about...awww, man. I blew my imagination wad on Holly Hobbie coloring book ideas. Whatever, I should stop trying to control my thoughts this much. Just drift. Breathe in and out, in and out. In and out.
10. Holly Hobbie. Holly Hobbie. Holly Hobbie.
Oh, it's not a tragedy. I slept til 11 am this morning, and got a lot of sleep this past holiday weekend. I'll go to bed early tonight, hopefully. But when you're lying awake at (now) 5:32 after four hours of thwarted effort, your internal monologue tends towards either the fruitlessly existential or the maddeningly specific.
Crap I've been thinking about since roughly 1 am:
1. What am I doing with my life? Specifically, where did it all go wrong for me to such a degree that I own such a decrepit, uncomfortable, spring-sprung bed?
2. Why should I complain about my bed? People sleep in worse beds. Many people have no beds at all. Eric, the homeless guy who looks like Jamiroquai with facial lesions who hangs out in front of Kellogg's diner, sleeps in a stairwell, and that's when he's lucky. I should be grateful for any bed at all and go the hell to sleep on the power of that gratitude alone.
3. Ruminating upon the sleeping places of the homeless is not, in and of itself, soporific. I should think about something peaceful, like snow gently falling...onto the sleeping homeless people. I should turn on the TV.
4. Everything on television is enervating, noisy, and wants to sell me something. Fucking Christmas season, with the endless commercials urgently exhorting me to buy as much stuff as possible in the next three-and-a-half weeks. I'm worried about basic necessities. Fuck you, Circuit City.
5. Well, at least I FINALLY got finished with my incredibly frustrating 96-page Holly Hobbie color and activity book freelance project! I closed up freelance-writer-shop at 11:30 tonight, but I can't seem to let go of it. My mind keeps coming up with goddamned coloring book page scenarios, and then resenting the hell out of them.
6. I had my interview for the New School B.A. program on Wednesday and I think it went pretty well, but I mentally re-write my application essays and obsess over the possible reasons I won't get in.
7. I think this bout of insomnia may be PMS. I often get insomnia and meaningless anxiety around this time. Too much information? Well, I can't say this information thrills me either, bucko. So it might be PMS. So what? Knowing it doesn't make me any sleepier.
8. Luckily, work is kind of slow at the library lately, so I can be a little zombified tomorrow without it mattering much. I just gotta get through an eight-hour workday, then buy some Tylenol PM on my way home from work and collapse. My New School application process is done, Holly Hobbie's done, there's nothing too specific hanging over my head right this second, really. Eventually, I will have a good night's sleep. really, everything's cool. Except for the fact that I'm thirty+thousand years old and I don't even own a bed without ginormous craters in it. Also, my government is operating secret torture prisons all over the world, it would seem. Shit.
9. I know. Let's daydream about having enough of something. Like money, or time, or sleep. I'll daydream about...awww, man. I blew my imagination wad on Holly Hobbie coloring book ideas. Whatever, I should stop trying to control my thoughts this much. Just drift. Breathe in and out, in and out. In and out.
10. Holly Hobbie. Holly Hobbie. Holly Hobbie.
posted by sarahfisch at
2:28 AM
6 Comments:
I love you Miss Fisch!!!!
I'm going to mail you some Ambien.
To Sarah's family reading this: She won't take them...it'll just be the knowledge that she has them that will put her to sleep every night.
Alright, well it's 4 'till 11 here where I am and it looks like I'll be up all night worrying on whether you got any sleep or not. If there is any justice, even of the merely accidental kind, then you are asleep right now dreaming that Holly Hobbie is your bitch! She is you know, 'your bitch' that is. I hope, in your dream, she's cleaning toilets with her goddam bonnet. Of course, she'll win that one too because she'll LIKE doing it.
Holly Hobbie is SUCH a bitch.
Oh, honey, you know I feel your pain. I have meaningful discussions about Holly Hobbie EVERY DAY. If you want true existential pain, try writing a Care Bears book. When I told my doctor I was editing coloring books based on Marshmallow Peeps, he said, "Oh, I hate that shit."
Oh, y'all are awesome. I got some sleep and I'm doin' somewhat better.
Gene, your ability to write for the Marshmallow Peeps is nothing short of miraculous.
It totally trumps pidldly-ass medical science.
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