i'm extremely tired today, and for once i don't even have a good excuse. i've just stopped sleeping, for some reason.
those of you non-existent readers who know me know that i used to have horrible, terrible insomnia problems. over the last few years, they've pretty much abated, quite possibly as a result of me finally taking the time to get a lot of my other emotional/mental shit together. but for a long time they were quite bad. i mean, i always have been and likely always will be a "night person", and if i continue working in higher education, my night-person-ness will likely continue to be exacerbated by the fact that will always have to take my work home with me and that work will always require the occasional late night. but. for most of my life between the ages of...oh, say fourteen to twenty-four i slept much less than eight hours a night every night, due to stress, overuse of caffeine and just generally being a total nutjob. once i got to wsu, it somehow got even worse because the insomnia collided with a suddenly massive workload. then, i was often working 12-16 hours a day for weeks at a time, but still only sleeping 3-4 hours a lot of the time.
anyway, the point is that it was bad. but, just like that year of college where you drink yourself into oblivion (everyone does that, right?), i didn't really realize how bad until i stopped sleeping again over the last few days. basically, having some time off from being crazy and then returning to it really put into perspective just how crazy i was.
the experience has been extra weird this time because my inability to sleep doesn't really seem to be caused by anything. i mean, i'm stressed over not having a job lined up for fall, and i'm stressed over needing to finish my dissertation, but i feel like those stresses are within normal levels. otherwise, i'm pretty normal-feeling in terms of my brains and my thinkings and my word stuff things go cant gonna be for now
last week, lindsey and i went sledding twice, right after the first and second big snowfalls that we had here in pullman. during the first night, i banged my legs up quite a bit, because right before we went out, the snow turned to rain for a few hours, which built up a thick crust of ice on top of the inches and inches of snow. the result was a sledding surface that was fast, but prone to breaking and catapulting you off the sled onto a sheet of ice with little ice-knives sticking out of it that made ice-holes in your body and caused you ice-pain. it hurt a bit, but i was fucking excited to sled and thought little of it. the next morning, i could barely move. anything. anywhere. so what did i do? go out sledding again the next night, of course. this was on softer snow, but i still added new bruises atop my bruises and was less than happy the next morning. later that same morning, i slipped on a patch of black ice and fell in the parking lot. and i mean fell, as in i saw my feet above my head before i hit the ground. this felt like it had probably broken every bone in my entire body, a feeling that persisted for at least 12 hours. 36 hours later, i still couldn't move my head to the right without pain, and sleeping started getting difficult. now that i think of it, that's probably where the problem started.
three nights ago, i couldn't get to sleep until about 5am, which was unfortunate because i had to get up for class at 7. this seemed a bit odd to me, considering that i should have fallen asleep quickly because i had only slept for about five hours the night before...but i didn't think too much of it. i was much more weirded out the next night when, on 2 hours of sleep i couldn't fall asleep by 6am. a bit confused and panicked, i jammed a ton of melatonin down my face and finally nodded off around 7. i got up at 10:30 or so to go to work, and it felt like it took the melatonin about 12 hours to get out of my system. nonetheless, i managed to spend a decent amount of the day at work, and i even Accomplished Things. then last night, somehow, i didn't fall asleep till 5 again, and i had to get up at 7 to teach.
throughout this entire process, i've been able to feel myself slowly becoming more and more impaired, sort of like getting drunk slowly over three days, but without the part where it's fun and you're screaming obscenities good-naturedly and riding a skateboard uphill backwards naked while on fire.
anyway, i'm not really sure why i spent a ton of time writing all of this. i guess it's a long way of saying that i've finally realizing how much of a difference actually sleeping a decent amount most nights a week makes in making me an emotionally functional, socially useful person. because i am totally not that right now.
also, if i never fall asleep again and die from exhaustion, this will be my pointless, pointless three-day memoir. it will be ALL THAT REMAINS OF MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH WORDS
oh, and also, this entire sleep-deprivation weirdness episode has played out while i've been reading mike doughty's new book the book of drugs, which is a memoir about...well, drugs. it's certainly supposed to be a sad book, mostly (i think), but there's something about lacking sleep that makes drugs (especially nicotine) seem charming. also, listening to lots of soul coughing when you're not even entirely sure that you would pass that self-awareness "mirror test" is not a good idea. i feel like the music is making paint drip out of my hair follicles in all of the primary colors.
i should probably take a nap.
UPDATE: it has been suggested to me by various sources that my sleeplessness might have been caused by the sun. THE SUN! well, fuck the sun, then.
