Gee, Brain, What Do You Want To Do Tonight?
Please Don’t say “Same thing we do every night”…
I’m not suffering from insomnia. Not really. My brain has tried to reach a compromise with me. While I drift off to sleep, it keeps doing what it does; considering interesting concepts, spinning fantasies, creating worlds and getting ideas.
It’s not working out for me. What I need is some good, restful slumber. No more of this sleeping yet staying active stuff. No more getting woken an hour or more before my alarm because of vivid dreams — no matter how enjoyable those dreams were. No more weird combination of being wide awake and thinking while also feeling like a zombie and failing to get my brain in gear.
Or, I should say, the right gear. My brain has no trouble focusing. It just doesn’t want to focus on the things I should be focusing on. At the moment, the thing I should be focusing on, is my job. And the conversation I am having with my brain, while not in so many words, goes like this:
Brain: “Oh. I know this. I can’t think about any of this. I’m going to think about something else.”
Me: “Dude, I can’t actually do this if you’re off thinking about stuff. Get back here and focus on this spreadsheet.”
Brain: “It’s boring. Feed me coffee and I might.”
Me: “I seem to remember you enjoying work not too long ago”
Brain: “Ya. When I was figuring it out. Now it’s just repetition.”
Me: “If it’s so easy, why aren’t these numbers adding up?”
Brain: “We put in 69 instead of 96 four rows up.”
Me: “Oh…”
Brain: “Hey, lets go on Medium. There’s always stuff to think about on there.”
Me: “No. We have to work.”
Brain: “Feed me. FEEEEED MEEEEEE”
You might have noticed, I am on Medium right now.
I do like my job, if I can get calm and quiet focus. My brain refuses to be calm and quiet, because much like a toddler, it only does that if I get my rest. Sleep is not exactly the same as rest. And I haven’t had much rest for months now.
