Short Term Insomnia

Of course I can't sleep right now. It's 6:30, in the blessed ay-em, as Colonel Potter would say, and I should be deep into my REM cycle and turning my pillow into a drool-sponge. But no. My mind is racing at about a hundred miles an hour and I just can't turn out the lights, no matter how tired I am or how much I know that I should be sleeping.

I've got lots going on today, and about a million things to do before Sticky arrives tomorrow. Ok, actually I'm down to about only 15 things or so, but still--I should be banking up my sleep because Lord knows I'm not going to be getting any for awhile, and my time today is valuable.

And throwing another monkey wrench into the whole thing is the fact that after about a five-day layoff from any kind of interesting blogging, the ideas are just gushing forth from my brain like a long-dry oil well finally bearing it's crude fruit. So I've been scribbling furiously on the notepad I keep handy next to my bed, and at some point next week when the buffoonery is just a fond memory, not only will I have a 'trip report' to write, I'll also have some other material for your reading enjoyment.

Believe me, there is nothing I'd rather do today than sit here and pound out about a hundred pages of interesting narrative for you all, because it's all so fresh in my head. But I can't--I've just got too much to do and too many things are bidding for my time. I wish I could control the monster, but it just doesn't work like that. Sometimes I go for days without the slightest inkling of inspiration--like all of last week, for instance. And some days the genie comes out of the bottle with a vengeance.

Today is one of those days, but unfortunately I can't do anything with it but make three wishes that the inspiration finds me again in about a week.

I guess that's why I'd never make it as a professional writer. Deadlines would be hopelessly ineffective and I'd likely get fired immediately from any writing job I'd be lucky enough to find. I feel like that artist on Heroes who can only paint his peering-into-the-future masterpieces while he's cranked up on heroin. I just don't know what my heroin equivalent is, or when it's going to strike.

But I don't need heroin. I need a sleeping pill.

I guess if worse comes to worse, I could turn the TV onto C-SPAN and watch all of the Martin Luther King day coverage, which should normally put me right out. But I'd have to keep one eye open just in case I'm able to catch Ted Kennedy emerging from his drunken stupor long enough to give his annual 'I Have a Dram' speech from the Senate floor.

Mikey