Days 3 through 16

Hey, remember when I resolved to get up at 5:30 a.m. each morning for a week? I only managed it for three days. Then I settled into a pattern of rising at about 6:30 instead. It wasn't hard, and I was feeling great about the work.

Just one problem. I also started needing naps. Some days I'd stretch out on the couch for a 5 p.m. "catnap" that would stretch two or three hours. If it was my night to make dinner, I didn't get back to my desk until around 9.

And the time would fly. It would fly, you might say, on the wings of my inner night owl, who was delighted to have me back again and who kept me going until 2 or 3 a.m. That was fine for a while, because I was still getting about seven hours of sleep. The only weird thing is that I wasn't getting them all at once. I was getting them from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., and then again from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Does this pattern divide my days? Or does it double them?

In the last four days, I've started going to bed at 4:30. I learned that if I get really tired at 3 a.m., I can be assured of a brief second wind at 4. if I just push through it. Sure enough, 4 a.m. comes and I'm alert again. Not to be trusted in operating heavy machinery, of course, but alert.

Tonight looks like it will be another long night. The good news is that rest is coming. (Good thing, because I know I can't keep this up.) I get to sleep the "sleep of the just" (as A. likes to call it) tomorrow afternoon because a) I cancelled part of my office hours; and b) I today handed over a new article draft to our little reading group. It's the first work I've ever shown to this group of people and I'm a little nervous about it. (Many of them also happen to be friends, which makes it harder somehow.) But the good news is that it's another good chunk of writing done, another step closer to the goal.

That's worth some lost sleep, right?

Actually, I'm not sure. Would you laugh if I said that I live for sleep? In all seriousness, I think it's one of the greatest physical pleasures there is. Remember the good-bye speech that Thornton Wilder wrote for Emily? Among the sacred in-life things she would miss was "sleeping and waking up."

Just one more week of stress. Have found myself channeling What Now this week: "All will be well and all will be well and all will truly be well."

(p.s. My lastest nutritional nadir: This weekend's writing was fueled almost entirely by iced tea and pretzel rods. At least that was a little bit balanced out with a couple of tomato-feta omelettes.)