I'll sleep when I'm dead

This week has been sort of a mess, in terms of sleep and rest. Which is why I'm posting from an IHOP at 5:30 a.m. and haven't posted anything else all week.

I don't know if my problems sleeping could properly be called insomnia, since that implies a physical inability to sleep. Most of the time I find myself up late, I'm aware that I could easily sleep, I just would rather not. Edgar Allen Poe called this tendency to do unhealthy things when we're perfectly capable of doing the opposite "The Imp of the Perverse," a fantastic turn of phrase that always comes to mind when I have no one to blame for my current situation save myself.

This imp grabbed me pretty hard Monday night: instead of getting to bed early and resting up for what was already shaping into a stressful, deadline-obsessed week at work, I stayed up and played my guitar. Non-stop. Until 3 a.m. Then I got up at six o'clock to get a much-needed early start on the day.

Why? I mean, it's not like I didn't have fun or need the practice (I actually remembered four songs that I'd totally forgotten—given my past taste in music, however, I'm not sure that's a good thing), but I am a grown-ass man, almost 37 years old! Honestly, the choice between getting a good night's sleep during a rough week at work or shredding out "Seek and Destroy" by Metallica for 6 hours is a fucking no-brainer!

Obviously, I still have no brain.

And, needless to say, I've been suffering for it this week. Tuesday night I begged out of trivia to hit the sack early and ended up working on my mid-week D&D adventure until 11 p.m. Up at 6 o'clock on Wednesday morning, out at 6:30 p.m. and off to D&D, which ran until 12:30 a.m. Back home, bed at 1:15, up at 6:00 and off to work again, a grand total of 14 hours of sleep over three days packed into the black bags under my eyes.

Luckily, my work didn't suffer. My coworkers, however, were not so lucky.

Out of work at 6:30 last night, I was home in bed by 7:00 and stayed there for eight blissful hours of uninterrupted unconsciousness—which meant that at three o'clock this morning, I was sitting up, wide awake, in a totally silent house.

So that brings me to now: IHOP, 6:30 a.m., full of coffee and corned beef hash and hammering away on my laptop. I'm going to head into work, get everything whipped into shape, then spend the evening trying to get my circadian clock back in time with the rest of humanity. What a joy! Man, am I glad I remembered how to play "Am I Evil?" on Monday!

Seriously, the next time that fucking imp gets a hold of my brain, I'm paging a young William Shatner to come in and start shouting about little creatures on the wing of the plane. Maybe that'll rattle some sense into me.

Nah…probably not.