Bloodshot

A lot of my friends love to boast about how much sleep they can avoid. I may be mixing up the context a bit, but I think I have the idea: if one isn't asleep, one can do other things, and other things are more interesting than sleep. Sounds great, and I respect those that can pull it off. I ain't one of them.

It's not like I have the fun kind of insomnia where I can't physically sleep for days at a time, otherwise I'd be one of the above. Sleeping, for me, is something of a chore. I've never been able to just lie on the couch and grab an hour of rest, not without a major dose of either antihistamines or disease. At night, I can have burned 10,000 calories, worked eight hours, and played games with friends until I thought the pieces/ screen was moving on its own, my head hits the pillow and it takes an hour for my head to calm down, sometimes longer. It's not enough that I'm physically, mentally, spiritually exhausted, oh no, I have to WANT it.

This doesn't exclude me from the biological need for sleep, in fact Nature thought it'd be funny if my need was actually above average on top of being able to get it so roughly. Like many of my countrymen, I am not in shape. Sorry, Body, I have other things I'd like to do with my time. When I can, I exercise, but usually I can't, which limits my energy under ideal conditions. These conditions are mostly theoretical, and I can't recall actually experiencing them; in fact, I think that's what "ideal" means.

Last night's, for example, were what I call "good" conditions: plenty of physical and mental activity, maybe not as social as possible, started prepping before 11pm. Today I woke up feeling exactly the same as I did before sleeping, re: completely exhausted. This isn't unusual, I just drink a couple cups of coffee and it goes away. Not today. Today I drove to work, barely, my brain moves like mud in winter, and someone has replaced my eyes with burnt-out charcoal. If I could access my full vocabulary (thank you, internet, for getting me this far), I'd properly curse whatever gene was responsible for this. Though now that I think about it, one ancestor or another had to have beaten me to that punch.

And I have five more hours of work to go through. Score.