No Sleep In Brooklyn

I don't normally work on Wednesdays, but the girls were at trade shows today, so I worked a full day. Not only that, but I did not sleep well last night, and have stumbled around today feeling only mostly awake despite the extra coffee I had at lunch. (Usually, I only allow myself one cup in the morning because if I don't restrict myself, I will drink it all day long and then I really don't sleep.)

So when I got home tonight, I ate dinner, put on Mythbusters, and couldn't keep my eyes open. Like an idiot, I said, "Let me just lie down for a moment and rest my eyes..."

I woke up at 8:30 still feeling extremely groggy. I decided to try to put on another Mythbusters while I woke up a little. It had only been a half hour nap, and should be perfect to just shake it off and keep going. But I fell asleep again. This continued until I finally decided, at just before 11:00PM to turn out the lights and let myself go to sleep for real. I knew this would mean not writing today. I also knew it would be the first time I had failed at my goal. My thoughts went thusly:

I can't believe it only took you a week to fail at this. You should get up and try to write.

But I'm so tired! I honestly don't think I could string two sentences together.

But if you miss one day, you know it will throw the whole thing off, you'll figure since you failed you might as well just stop the experiment, because what, really, is the point of going on?

No, don't do that! There is a lesson here. One setback should not derail the whole train. This is exactly your problem, Julia, you make one mistake and instead of learning from it and growing as a person, you just throw your hands up in the air, call yourself a failure and sulk for 6 months. Just let yourself go to sleep, get up early tomorrow and write twice as much. Your friends and family will forgive you.

At which point, I tucked myself in, closed my eyes and prepared to sleep.

Okay, you can sleep now.

It's really all right, you don't have to stay awake. Just go to sleep and write about this in the morning.

Damn.

So now here I am, awake at last, just in time for me to completely ruin my sleep tonight. Thank goodness I have the day off tomorrow, though I was hoping to get up at a semi-reasonable hour to get stuff done. You know, laundry and stuff. The plus side is that I am writing today, but it would have been OK if I hadn't. The world wouldn't have ended, the challenge wouldn't have suffered, and no one would have been mad at me. (You wouldn't right?)

Ah well. As long as I'm up, I guess I'll work on my short story. See you tomorrow.