It's late. Again. Or still. I'm always up at this hour. It is rare that I go to bed before three a.m. I'm not an insomniac, strictly speaking. I don't have trouble sleeping. I just can't seem to get by ass to bed. It feels pathological. I might miss something if I go to bed too early. I don't have any strong ideas about why I do this. Sometimes I imagine I was raped at bedtime as a child, and my avoiding going to bed now is a replay of that childhood trauma. I wonder if I am avoiding the loneliness I'll feel before falling asleep, with my single head on a pillow I fantasize is shared by two.
It feels related to my chronic procrastination. Always finding something else to do on my way to do the one thing that needs to be done now. Like go to work. Like write a song. Do my taxes. Go to bed. Rather than work on my own paying music clients, I am seized with the conviction that painting some area of my place of work is the most important, time-sensitive issue in the world. As I assemble the contents of my briefcase in preparation for leaving the house and catching the MUNI to the studio to teach, I'll stop at the computer and start in on a new sheet of exercises, or a flyer for an upcoming gig. It's not that those things aren't worth doing; it's just frustrating and odd that they seem to need doing at the very moment when I should be dropping everything to catch the bus.
I sit at the computer a lot. A year and a half ago I was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism. I think it was from sitting too long at the desk, following endless mindless links from a daily news story, through an anti-war blog, to a website demonstrating Krav Maga, to a dopey kitten video, to a baby in a well, and then winding up back at a page detailing the Iraq war body count.
About every other night, I make my way to bed after I fall asleep at the computer, my chin resting on my chest and my neck all kinked out. I was getting ready for bed before writing this - I have an acupuncture appointment in the morning. Now the word count is up to four hundred and three.
It feels related to my chronic procrastination. Always finding something else to do on my way to do the one thing that needs to be done now. Like go to work. Like write a song. Do my taxes. Go to bed. Rather than work on my own paying music clients, I am seized with the conviction that painting some area of my place of work is the most important, time-sensitive issue in the world. As I assemble the contents of my briefcase in preparation for leaving the house and catching the MUNI to the studio to teach, I'll stop at the computer and start in on a new sheet of exercises, or a flyer for an upcoming gig. It's not that those things aren't worth doing; it's just frustrating and odd that they seem to need doing at the very moment when I should be dropping everything to catch the bus.
I sit at the computer a lot. A year and a half ago I was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism. I think it was from sitting too long at the desk, following endless mindless links from a daily news story, through an anti-war blog, to a website demonstrating Krav Maga, to a dopey kitten video, to a baby in a well, and then winding up back at a page detailing the Iraq war body count.
About every other night, I make my way to bed after I fall asleep at the computer, my chin resting on my chest and my neck all kinked out. I was getting ready for bed before writing this - I have an acupuncture appointment in the morning. Now the word count is up to four hundred and three.
