Who Needs Sleep?

I’ve decided to pull an all-nighter tonight, but not for any of the reasons college students typically pull a stupid stunt like this. I don’t have any major exams or projects due tomorrow; in fact, I don’t have anything due specifically tomorrow. Instead, the goal of this particular exercise is to get my absurd sleeping schedule back in order.

Keeping myself awake during the day and asleep at night is an almost constant battle against inevitability. For reasons that aren’t clear to me I have always been a poor sleeper, in general, and even worse when it comes to actually waking up (once I finally do fall asleep). Classes and work act as regulating influences and are, by and large, the only reason I’m not on a thirty-six hour rotating schedule, but their effectiveness is mediated by the fact that I usually have weekends off. Once you remove the all the “must dos” from my life all that’s left is a man utterly incapable of making himself go to sleep at a reasonable hour, which leads him to wake up later the next day and begins a vicious feedback loop. The saving grace of all this is the fact that there are only two days per weekend, meaning Monday responsibilities can slam the brakes before serious damage is done.

In a system such as this, the real danger comes from vacation time. Those wonderful days of consecutive bliss are wolves among the flock of lambs that metaphorically represent my psyche, ravaging through them in a grim parody of nature’s fury. By the time the break is over I’m getting into bed around six am and rolling up around, say, two in the afternoon if I’m feeling plucky.

The end result is a painful decision: I can attempt to go to bed around midnight, like normal people, only to lie awake and bored for six or seven hours until my alarm goes of. Alternatively, I can give up and try to do something productive (or at least entertaining) during those hours, the goal being that by midnight the next day I’ll be so exhausted that falling asleep at the proper hour should be a relatively trivial endeavor.

Heck, I might even pass out less than an hour after hitting the pillow. Imagine that!

Additional Functionality

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Arbitrary Detrius