Hey there internet,

Yeah I know it’s been a while. I’ve got a list of those ‘I hate my job’ posts in the works, I swearz it. All that’s needed is till fill in the blanks, etc. etc.

But anyway it’s after 3am and I’ve already wrote long-ass emails to my mom and the owner of the BSC so what’s a little blog-post gonna hurt anyone? Also, I have consumed more than my usual share of wine tonight. Be forewarned…

But my only subject right now is this really - why can I not get to sleep at a reasonable house of the evening? I would consider myself a morning person, in that when I am able to get myself out of bed in the morning I thoroughly enjoy the sunrise, dew in the grass, and birds singing. I love it, having the whole day ahead of me, endless possibilities, etc. But in fact it rarely happens, cause I can’t get to sleep at night. I have had periods over the years, mainly when I had an 8am job or class to get to, that I managed to get to sleep by midnight or so. But for most of my adult life I’ve slipped time and again into staying up till 2-3am or later. And the thing is, I’m not one of those people for whom this type of schedule is a good thing. I’m not a night-owl, as it were. My body *needs* 8 hours of sleep a night or I start getting cranky. Not only that, but I’ve consistently proven that those 8 hours should ideally come between 11pm and 7am. At least, that’s what I remember from grade school, cause I think that’s the last time I routinely went to sleep at 11pm. If I routinely go to sleep at 2am and get up at 10am (like lately) I will become a walking zombie within a few days.

And so it has been for the last few weeks. I moved in recently with my girlfriend of five years, Maryjo. Ohhh, you didn’t hear about that internet? Yeah, it’s my official excuse for having no time to write anything here for the past two months. I took it as an opportunity to start getting to bed earlier, and it worked for a few weeks. But old habits, they die hard. Maryjo now has an official fancy job at an officially fancy new library, meaning she has to be at work in Raleigh, NC at 8am. Our new place, it’s west of Carrboro, 45 minutes away from Maryjo’s fancy new job and library. So Maryjo hits the sack at 11pm now during the week, and since there is NO WAY I can make myself fall asleep at 11pm, I’m once again left by myself to spend the wee hours of the morning with you, dearest internet.

So true to word, it’s 3:27 AM, and tomorrow I will be a walking zombie. But for some *reason* I always feel wide awake after midnight. It’s like my final chance to relax and do whatever I wanted to do but didn’t get to during the day. Also, the internet does not help. Shame on you internet! For always being on 24/7, like a late-night white-trash walmart. But I should not blame just the internet, cause even before I had my first dial-up AOL account, I was staying up late cranking up the headphones or watching the MTV. Maybe it’s because my mom made me go to bed at 9pm when I was young. As I got older that hour was extended to 10pm, but still I think once I moved in with my dad at the age of 16 and he said ‘go to bed when you feel like it’ it was like a revelation to me. Like the door to the secret underground world of ‘late-night’ had finally been opened! Now not only could I watch Letterman on a regular basis if I wanted, I could even watch whoever came on AFTER Letterman!

And so it went through the years, to the point where for whatever reason my brain wants to keep going as long as possible at the end of the day. Most nights I have to finally tell myself ‘you really need to get some sleep now’ before I finally hit the hay and turn out the lights. It’s almost never because I’m actually to tired to stay awake. In fact, in the past couple of years I’ve started to even get a paranoia about it. Like, I’m afraid of sleep. Because you know, once you pass that point of no return, just where the hell does your brain *go* for several hours? I feel like I have to let go of my consciousness, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to give up control of my mind for several hours. It seriously freaks me out some nights when I’m laying in bed.

Sometimes I wish sleep was not necessary. I mean, imagine what you could get accomplished if you could stay up all night, every night! Food and sleep, these are things that I feel sort of waste my time a lot. Now food, it does have some upsides to it, but sleep… I just wish we were evolutionally beyond it already. I could be so much more productive!

But, alas it is not so. If I don’t get to sleep soon, I’ll be worthless tomorrow. At least until tomorrow night when the cycle starts again. I tell ya, I’m getting older now and my body is seriously suggesting to me at that now is the time I ‘get better eating habits’ and ‘get better sleeping habits’.

Well, we all must be slaves to our physical bodies in the end, but I tell ya I still thinks it’s a waste of time. Honestly, if I ever *really* need to relax I can just put on the headphones, and meditate to some classic Letterman…