How is everyone? I miss you all. I hope you've been well. Me? I'm doing great. Mostly. But I mean it. I miss you guys. I want to write an entry, to update regularly. I miss writing about my life every day and pretending that it's some great, important work that will enlighten future civilizations. I'm a professional writing major, for crying in the mud. Is it too much to ask for me to update my online journal more than once a week?
As I lay in my bed at night, the Internet calls out to me in its sweet, seductive, romantic voice: "You know you want me. Come over here and touch me. If it feels GOOD, do it!" It does feel good, and I do want to do it, but usually by the time I've made it to bed, it's 4AM and it becomes a choice between entertaining you (hopefully) or getting a few hours of sleep before starting another insanely long day. True, I take lots of breaks to eat cereal, play Tetris, talk on the phone, go out with my boy, and mock people at the all-night diner, but when you get right down to it, my day usually begins around 8:30AM and ends somewhere between 2:30 and 4.
I've always been a night owl, I suppose. My parents postulated that this dates back to my infancy, when I'd wail and scream at night instead of sleeping, at which point they'd get up and hold me until I finally fell asleep. They got a clue by the time my sister was born and just let her cry herself back to sleep. To this day, she's out before her head even hits the pillow.
On sleepovers in middle school, I would always be up the latest. I remember watching the Gordon Elliot Show at 3AM at a friend's house one Friday night after everyone else had gone to sleep. It didn't matter that Gordon Elliot sucks huge hairy ones; it mattered that I really only need four or so hours of sleep a night. Seven is optimal, five to six is manageable, but four does in a pinch. There have been lots of pinches lately.
There were a lot of pinches in high school too, especially senior year. My mom would often poke her head into my bedroom at some ungodly hour and demand that I go to sleep right then, at which point I'd rattle off the laundry list of tasks I still hoped to complete before finally zonking out. She finally gave up around March, thank God.
I'm sure some of this insomnia is the nature of college itself. When I come home in the dead of night, scattershot dorm windows are illuminated against the dark black of the building, pointing out that I'm not the only night owl in my residence hall.
It's not that I don't like sleep. I love sleep. If I can get that eight to ten hours all those crazy doctors recommend, good for me. But I have to reconcile the fact that my brain works best after 11PM while the rest of the world gets going around 9AM. The best days are the ones where I fall asleep just before the break of dawn, getting a good night's rest without rising before 2:00 in the afternoon. Of course, the fact that everything in University Town shuts down at 4:30PM throws a monkey wrench into those days, but I still get them in occasionally.
I think what bothers me is that the eight-hour model means you sleep through one-third of your life. We're only on this planet for a short time, after all, and we have no guarantees that we'll wake up again. Why would you want to waste away 33% of your life unconscious as the world turns around you?
Why, you'll probably ask, don't I just update in the middle of the night? Because I'm busy writing essays, studying for tests, and mocking people at that all-night diner, uh-duh.
Seriously though, now that the retraction period for New Year's Resolutions has expired, it's time for me to make a New Week's Resolution: more tales from the college. More updates for the site. And consequently, more readerness, because in the words of my sister, "If you can say it, it's a word."
Someone got here by searcing for: "waking up at noon" farley Reading: Um...yes. Watching: Doing Time on Maple Drive, an interesting and dark portrayal of one of those seemingly perfect families. The casting is great, with the exception of the mother, and the story is a good one. Listening to: Tina Turner. Eating: Froot Loops.
