Leftovers

It is 3:44AM and I have been up since 3. Lying in bed, the covers pulled over me, trying to will sleep. But no matter what I do, nothing is working. I am wide awake. I am thinking about all that I have to do today and all that I want to do, when all I really crave is sleep. Now. Quickly. Before the sun rises.

I used to hate when this happened on Sunday nights. Especially a Sunday night after a long holiday weekend. I was refreshed after all those days away from the office and went to sleep early with grandiose ideas of all I would get accomplished that Monday. It would be a productive and satisfying Monday. It would be the start of a good week.

But then I would not be able to sleep. I would toss and turn. I would lie awake listening to the quiet and think. Think of all I wanted to do. Think of how tired I was going to be if sleep did not come fast and how little of what I wanted to do would get accomplished. But I wouldn’t move. As if just lying there, still, would be rest enough.

I knew better. I knew that on nights like tonight Monday morning would come and I would feel the hangover of no sleep in every cell of my body as though I had been out all night and overserved at the bar.

That is what I have been doing since 3AM. I have been huddled under my comforter thinking of everything on my calendar and my to do list that is going to suffer from me being exhausted from too little sleep.

It took awhile before the cobwebs of the sleep I did have had washed completely away that I remembered. Lying still in bed on a Sunday night trying to will sleep is a leftover from corporate life.

I could get up right now and get something done. The time I work does not have to conform to someone else’s nine to five doctrine. I can work when I want to, in my bathrobe if it so pleases me. I could write until sleep falls upon me again. I could get something accomplished. Right now.

Like writing a blog. On leftovers after a long Thanksgiving weekend. I could hit publish anytime I want.