Clutcher

In the last year, I have developed an awful habit of sleeping from 9:30pm to 3am. This obtuse schedule aligns with nothing.

No evening news. No reading before bed. No tinkering with hobbies. Its pass out at a time when most people are looking forward to doing something, anything, that is not a responsibility.

And the early morning? Not even the fucking birds are up!

I don't wake up from these rested, mind you. Instead I wake up anxious and often sweaty and stiff. I have a penchant for passing out not in a bed or even a sofa (which would offer some dignity) but instead a small love seat in my living room. My head rests on the skinny part of the cushion just past the arm. My legs jut out over the other arm rest. Then I have my cat who sleeps above on the top of the love seat nestled between the cushions and wall.  And I don't have blankets but instead several pillows that I clutch.

I'm a clutcher when I sleep. I need to hold onto a pillow or wadded up blanket. Its my partner in this journey and when I wake up I look at it all groggily, "Where did this come from?" Its part of my nest which is much more appropriate to describe when I sleep. Pass out and then nest.

Being up at 3am, and feeling a tingle in your fingers despair in your heart sort of anxiety, I sometimes work. I knock out some emails and shuffle the papers I drag from the office. This makes me feel better and sometimes a coworker says "Wow you were up early. Email at 3:45am!" This small degree of attention makes my day ("You read my email?! Best friends?!) which counters any drowsiness. This also makes me make stupid mistakes which on my lower days I blame on others but mostly sends me into panics to make it right. "Don't worry. I got it! How can I make it up to you! Oh, I know! Let me wash all your dirty dishes after you eat lunch!"

This is hobby time. This is when I sleeve and unsleeve Magic cards. Clean my fish tanks. Or I keep plunking away at my world in Minecraft. I keep making little structures in the world and poking from island to island on it.

"Someone will see this and know that someone else came through! I will leave this chest with some iron ingots and sticks. A furnace and a crafting table. That way if they come through they will be set. Like a cache when sailors used to search for the Northwest Passage!"

I then stop when I see it is 5:30am or when that ennui hits that because its just me in this little world that no one will see this save for the stories I make up in my head. What I utter aloud in the basement clutching the Xbox controller.

Or I read, which used to keep me up, but now lulls me back into what is actually sleep. In that case I clutch the book.

Its a time for vices left alone with my reptilian thoughts.

Here is a good comeback to what that prick Velez said to me in 12th Grade AP Spanish. I am going to snoop at him on Facebook and think about it!

This would make a great story! Write it down, now before you pass out again!

We got that new shipment of laptops and I need to inventory them and I know Peyton with a E is going to ask why she doesn't get a new one and here is what I am going to say. No...wait, what about this.

I can't be mad at Peyton with a E. She looked really good yesterday.

Like all my posts this had a point (albeit imagined) when I began but now I want my early morning nap.