I have all my best ideas when I’m lying in bed, in that hazy gray that exists between sleep and wake. I have all of my weirdest thoughts then, too, and that is how I know I’m close. The weirder my brain, the closer I am. It’s like an orgasm, in a way. You can tell you’re getting close, and there is nothing you want to do to impede that sweet moment of takeover.
And this is why I don’t keep a notebook or a journal next to my bed. I think I used to. I vaguely remember jotting down dreams in the middle of the night, and I supposed I could keep something in the nightstand to write down all of these amazing ideas I have just before vanishing from the waking world. Of course, there are two problems with this scenario:
1. In the morning, my beautiful ideas will probably just sound asinine and confusing, and
2. I have trouble staying asleep these days, so turning on the light to write shit down would most likely be really counterproductive to my current primary objective, which is to get as much sleep as possible.
Why, you ask? Or didn’t. I don’t know. Maybe you don’t care, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Mostly it’s because I’m terrified of being tired. I’ve been terrified of being tired for the last ten or so years, since I started teaching and really needed a sharp mind to effectively make it through the day. Sure, there are days when I stagger into work and put on a bigger show than usual, because I’m so fucking exhausted I can barely think straight (fights keep me up. Almost any kind of argument with anyone. And overthinking stupid things I’ve said or done, mostly to colleagues or in class. I’ve said a lot of inappropriate things in class. You want an example? Seven years ago, I was teaching 2nd period Creative Writing, and ZK, a kid with a deformed arm and one of the shittiest, most entitled attitudes ((AND I had this fucker for two years in a row)) said, “I still don’t understand the difference between direct and indirect characterization,” for which the example that somehow burst from my mouth, the finest specimen of mouth diarrhea I’ve had to date, was: “Well, you could say that X is a porn addict, which would be direct characterization. You’re just straight up telling the audience he’s addicted to porn. If you want to indirectly characterize, you have to show this, through actions, dialogue, etc. So you might say, ‘X walked into the porn store and bought ten dildos, which isn’t telling anyone anything, but subtly insinuates,’ at which point my brain finally caught up with my mouth, and I took in the sight of the entire classroom, 30 adolescent faces staring at me with wide eyes and little round Os for mouths. Where this example came from remains a mystery. I wasn’t into porn, didn’t own a dildo, or know anyone who might even potentially face this particular scenario. Who knows how our brains really work? In retrospect, dildos aren’t even necessarily related to porn. There’s no direct correlation other than that one could be used in a scene in the other, or that they are both sold in sex shops. Unless I know even less about porn and/or dildos than I think I do... Anyway, that one definitely kept me up at night, for a long, long time, and I really couldn’t even laugh about it until a few years ago. Maybe I was just exhausted, which really just proves that I have reasonable ground to so deeply fear being tired). So I’m very afraid of being tired, and as my second trimester of pregnancy slowly winds into the third, I can already feel that thick quilt that plagued me for the first few months beginning to descend.
The beginning of the school year is, inherently, a very tiring time. There’s a lot to do, so teaching coupled with pregnancy, which is not only debilitating insofar as the lack of energy goes but also now includes crippling back aches, sciatica, heartburn, and constipation (fucking AWESOME), sounds like a little too much to bear.
However, on the bright side, my friend Lindsey just sent out some photos of her day-old newborn, who is fucking beautiful and perfect, which reminds me that it will all be worth it. So worth it.
