Going in to work on a Monday with no sleep is a special kind of hell. I wish I could say that this was all my own fault, that I made bad choices over the weekend and wound up not sleeping as a result because then I could accept the blame and do better in the future. Instead, I’m almost falling over while standing at my desk because I exhaustedly closed my eyes for just a moment and dozed off standing up. Not because I was too wrapped up in a game or a book but because my sleep rhythm is a sensitive creature these days and the disruption of the time changing last Sunday was enough that I wasn’t tired enough to sleep when I went to bed and, instead of eventually drifting off or suddenly waking up in the morning, I just stayed awake. Long enough that I gave up and when to go do some video game chores in the hope that it would either be mind-numbing enough to let my mind unclench or engaging enough that I could stop thinking about being unable to sleep long enough to feel tired. Instead of either of those things happening, I did a lot of shopping for supplies in Final Fantasy 14. I made out like a particularly well-appointed bandit, so I have to admit that this is one of the most productive sleepless nights I’ve ever experienced, but the day after it at work? As I try to stay focused and ride the line between immediate over-caffeination, crashing, and getting kept awake from excessive caffeine intake? That sucks. Monumentally.

I don’t know if you’ve ever gone a night without sleep when you’re in your mid-thirties and coming off of two particularly sleepless and exhausting years (for an insomniac, which is saying something!), but it hits you like a ton of bricks. Not quite literally but way closer to literally than most people mean when they use that phrase and you can trust me on this because, due to the nature of my work, I know exactly how hard a ton of bricks hits. Also 1300lbs of bricks. Pretty much any hundred-ish number from 150 to 2200, actually. So you can trust me when I tell you that I am struggling to stay coherent (if my previous aside doesn’t already make that point) after slapping my brain around with caffeine all morning. If I wasn’t experienced at operating on so little sleep, I’m not sure what I’d do. It is interesting, though, as I’m more pointedly trying to cope with exhaustion than I usually do, that I can snap into and out of a fugue so rapidly. It’s even more tiring, of course, to be forced to rip myself out of a doze and into a focused conversation the instant I detect movement in my periphery, but it’s a skill I developed decades ago and it is still serving me well, even if I have to fight the lie my body is telling me that my eyes are tired and could use just a few seconds of rest, of being closed, and that I’ll feel so much better after that. This lie always leads to dozing off or almost falling over at my desk.

I’ve gone on an extra walk, I’ve done what I can to proactively chase down things with my coworkers so none of them see me in a state of pitiable exhaustion in my office, and I’ve had a pretty productive day even by my usual standards. It’s difficult to fall asleep if you’re actively engaged and I’ve been leaning pretty heavily on that to keep me alert and focused between jaw-breaking yawns (this is a turn of phrase, not a literal-adjacent statement like my “ton of bricks” comment). Basically, I need to keep moving and doing something at all times or else I start to get overwhelmed by sleepiness, but I can’t push too hard because that will exhaust me and once I’m exhausted today, that’s about it for me. I do not have much in the way of reserves to call on, these days, since I’m still recovering from the last two years of bodily dysfunction, burnout, and sleeplessness, so I have to be careful not to push myself too hard but falling asleep at work isn’t going to fix anything, especially if I do it while I’m standing at my desk and crack my head open on the way down. Though, I supposed that would get me out of work for a bit. I mean, I’m not going to do anything about this train of thought since I absolutely do not want to deal with a concussion while I’m living by myself, but it’s difficult not to imagine how nice it would be to rest for a bit while I was in recovery. All the sleep I could get… Once I was out of the concussion danger zone, anyway.

Still, all things said and done, it’s not too bad. I slept pretty well prior to this, so I’m at least coming into it fairly well-rested (for me). I’m still able to be productive. Sure, I’ve got my Final Fantasy 14 Ultimate stuff tonight and that takes a degree of focus and attention I’m going to struggle to bring to bear, but so much of what goes on in the first two parts of the fight–the only parts we’ve cleared so far–is locked into muscle memory at this point that I’m not worried about knowing what to do so much as being able to accurately and swiftly press all my buttons. And, you know, not falling asleep during a lull in the action. That would be incredibly embarrassing, to fall asleep during an Ultimate, while in a voice chat with seven other people… I mean, it’s also incredibly unlikely given that it’s a focused activity and those tend to at least keep me awake when I’m this tired, but all bets are off because I’ll be sitting down and will probably have a blanket on my lap since it’s been so cold out lately… A sure recipe for sleepiness if I’ve ever heard of one. Except, you know, for last night. None of that helped me feel even the slightest bit sleepy last night, not until I started thinking about it right now did it do anything to me and now I want nothing more than to sit down for a snooze…