I haven't been sleeping well, lately. Not for any good (or bad) reason -- I've just found it preferable to do all the things I really need to do when nobody else on this side of the planet is awake. It was totally fine to live like that years ago, since anything in-between unemployment and self-employment doesn't really call for 9-5'ing. Now? Not so much.
I try to convince myself that three or four hours of sleep will suffice, and sometimes it does. But I guess there's a cumulative effect to this sort of thing, as I headed into work today needing to read eight scripts to clients with a certain level of zeal and eloquence, and it finally hit me that I was really fucking tired. Well past the point of having bloodshot, glassy eyes, I was literally stumbling on my walk from the bus stop to the office, very unable to navigate the sea of people doing whatever it is people do in Times Square.
When I got into the office, I noticed a peculiar side effect of sleep deprivation: It makes me talk like the filthiest, most exaggeratingly stereotypical truck driver ever. Was a series of audible "fucks" warranted by a faulty stapler? Probably not. I mean, sure, I had to staple a lot of papers together to prepare for this meeting, but I work in a fairly large building that had many other staplers available. In an industry that swells with pressure, it probably isn't a good idea to mark myself as the type of person who can lose their shit over a faulty stapler.
While somewhat slurry in general, I managed to keep it together for the twenty minutes that I needed to keep it together, and quietly ducked out afterwards. I've mentioned the long, long commute I have many times before, but today I was actually looking forward to it. There isn't much else to do on a long bus ride besides sleep. I settled in, cranked up the iPod, and as soon as the real world started blending with the dream world, a gigantic man sat almost literally on top of me, and spent the next 90 minutes guffawing into his phone with such incredible vigor that I'm still wondering if one of my enemies hired him to keep me from sleeping.
Yeah, this is pretty much my way of telling you that I'm too tired to write anything of substance tonight. As penance, I offer the embarrassing confession that I eat lemons much in the same way other people eat apples.
We now transform this into a random chat thread, only I guess it won't be so random since I'm going to give you a theme for discussion: Things that scared the shit out of you as a child, or maybe even now.
Posted by Matt on 07/24/2008. E-mail me!
Chestnuts roasted by 
Oh, and yes, I too like to get things done in late hours when the world is sleeping. I’m self-employed and work at home doing graphic design, so at least there’s no regular commute for me. But, I have to say I do grumble when clients call at 7:30am. I’d never call anyone before 9am, even if I knew they weren’t a night owl like me.