Sleep Deprivation

I’ve been awake for the past  36 or so hours, with the exception of an almost 2 hour nap.

The amazing thing is that I’m not all that tired.  This morning when I had to go into work at 7 AM, boy was I exhausted (not that it’s unlike anything I’ve done many times before), but I woke up enough to get through it.. at 2 when I left, I was finding the drive home challenging and was experiencing very small spurts of slight dizziness - or more like the feeling of drunkeness.. but somewhere during my efforts toward the endeavor I like to call “the boxes” (i.e. cleaning out my room), my mock-inebriation cleared up somehow, and, amazingly, this whole night I haven’t felt any more fatigued than during an average evening.  I’ve been awake and alert, feeling kind of normal night owl -ish.  It is only now that I’m finally settled into my bed (with a lovely sleeping girl next to me, mind you) that my drowsiness is starting to catch up to me.  Indeed, as I’m attempting to compose this my eyes are beginning to droop and my breathing may or may not be slowing.  Just thought I’d note an observation I made this morning: it almost never fails that in that strange state of sleep deprivation that I feel creatively inspired.  There’s a balance, of course - there’s a point where you’re so tired that your thoughts aren’t very coherent and the last thing you could do is write something.  But this morning, going to work on my two hours of sleep, (even though I was miserable) I was in that wonderful state of groggy awareness where all I want to do is listen to introspective Coldplay-type music and think, reflect, write poetry.  It is a state of being that has often struck me when I’ve been in a similar state while in the midst of a Falvey Library all-nighter.  Sometimes during that hell-period, I couldn’t help but take a walk through the strangely still, near-deserted campus with a mystical sounding song on my ipod (Your Love Means Everything always comes to mind when I think of these times) and feel this type of inspiration that isn’t usually available in daytime full-awareness.  Why, in losing a large chunk of my awareness, do I gain something else perhaps better, in a way... I lose all “normal” productivity but often produce something that eludes me during daily life: insight.