Friends, there is nothing quite like the experience of staying up all night, is there?
We all have our reasons for the all-nighters, and sure, sometimes it's all about homework and sometimes it's all about midterms. That's not really my concern. Rather, I'd like to share with all of you wonderful benevolent souls out there in Student Land an all-night adventure I recently partook in, and then maybe we can all share some stories, and it'll be a fantabulous love-in of supersensational happiness, okay?
Recently I spent eight days getting fewer than four hours of sleep almost every night, a streak that culminated in two-and-a-half days with absolutely no sleep whatsoever. I know I haven't broken any all-nighter records here; I'm sure dozens of pre-meds and engines students are chuckling delightedly to themselves, amused by the small-scale petty time periods that constitute "all-night adventures" for us non-psychoworkaholic majors. No, I didn't spend three weeks in the lab counting how many times the spectro-thermo-hydro-micro-photon laser-boogie dripped electromagnetic sulfur oxide, although I have oodles of respect for those of you who did.
No, what kept me deprived of so much sleep for such a long time was that dreaded stress bunny we all know and desprately strive to avoid: insomnia. Lying in bed, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on ceiling that inexplicably cease glowing after about five minutes, unable to get a wink of shuteye despite my best relaxation efforts. I'm way past counting sheep, friends. I'm into the modern thing, new age sleep. I picture myself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies, but in the end I'm still wide awake.
It's the stress that gets to me, the stress of thinking about too many different areas of my life at once. How is that class going? Should I go to see the professor? I wish I hadn't missed that lecture of Wednesday. Wednesday! I had lunch with Buford (a pseudonym). Did that go well? Is he angry with me? Maybe our entire friendship is based on a fundamentally corrupt paradigm. Maybe we're both just parasites siphoning useful energy off each other. Maybe the class is parasitic, too -- I use the professor to get a good grade and he uses my evaluation to get tenure.
I'm not saying that any of this analysis is remotely correct, or that I even go around thinking like this most of the day. But at night it all makes a strange kind of night-sense.
The good thing about staying awake for so long is that eventually a sort of heightened awareness starts to kick in. I find myself so acutely aware of the exact moment "now" that I can tunnel through it like an electron, remembering events just before they happen, looking simulataneously backwards and forwards through time.
Of course, that didn't start happening until the end of the week. Initially my eyes just looked a little bloodshot and I might have been slightly grumpier. It's true that I may have physically attacked a Hop cashier for being over by the ketchup while I was waiting to pay for my food, but really, I was just trying to get her attention.
I also invented several new late-night hobbies for myself. Ham radio, for example. Some radio waves are of a pretty low frequency, and you have to have the right equipment to tune them in, but I've learned some very interesting facts about the U.S. government. I'd love to share them with you, but you know, it's top secret and all that. Sorry.
And dental floss. Dental floss is fascinating stuff at four in the morning. You can wrap it around your finger again and again, and for a brief moment I felt as though I had actually become Ally Sheedy in "The Breakfast Club." ("My home life is unsatisfying ... ")
My reward for this dedicated insomnia was eighteen hours of dreamless, uninterrupted sleep this weekend. I feel like a new self is born today. I've thrown out my dental floss and apologized at the Hop, and once again time is only moving forward. Buford and I are doing just great, thanks for asking.
Still got the ham radio, though. New signals coming in every day. If this is as important as I think it is, I may have to stay awake all next week, too.
Wish me luck, friends ...
