Curses!

Alarm rings. Wake up. Check clock. Ample time before work. Hit snooze. Sleep again. Wake up. Check clock. Late for work. Curse the shitty movie on TV last night and rush for the shower. Run up the office steps. Sign in. Barely make it on time. Curse the old man in the rickety old car and his slow driving. Reach your desk. Turn on computer. Stare in agony at the pile of papers on the desk. Curse the office boy and his perpetual inefficiency.

“Is the report for the client ready for dispatch?”

Lie; “Yes boss!”  Flip through a pile of papers. Rub your temples to sooth the morning ache. Curse the boss for his early morning drive. Search around desperately for the tea boy. Curse the punctuality of the office staff.  Sink into your uncomfortable chair. Curse whoever bought the office furniture. Forget everything else. Bury head in work. Curse co-workers for their gross incompetence.

Check watch. Lunch time. Ask co-worker for cafeteria menu. Curse the administration for yet another unappetizing menu choice. Pick phone. Order in. Eat. Get out. Smoke. Curse the clouds and their inability to pour. Forget everything else. Bury head in work. Curse the heavy lunch and the drowsiness its causing.

Check watch. Its 730. Stare in agony at the even bigger pile of papers on desk. Curse the ever ringing phone and its effectiveness in not allowing any work to be done. Turn off computer. Sign off. Leave office. Curse the traffic jam and the long long drive back home.  Smoke.

Reach home. Find everything in darkness. Curse KESC and its never ending workers’ strike. Turn on generator. Turn on TV. Curse the news channels and their ghastly habit of repeating the same bad news over and over again. Get off couch. Wash up. Eat dinner. Curse the ever growing belly. Eat dessert! Eat some more dessert. Get out of the house. Smoke. Curse the mosquitoes and their determination to suck you dry.

Get in bed. Watch another shitty movie. Check clock. Curse the late hour. Put on alarm. Curse the remaining four days before the weekend starts. Sleep.

Dedicated to Monday blues.

Inspired by My Friend Leonard by James Frey. Read the book years ago but somehow its tone seemed appropriate for the piece.

Insomnia

“Sleep, that is eight hours a day I can utilize somewhere else”, that is how it starts I suppose. So you condition yourself to save up on hours a day by not sleeping. Mind is greater than body remember, all it really takes is a perception which makes you believe that I am not tired and I am in fact extra productive now. So your need to sleep goes down a considerable notch and you float in the bliss of having more time at your disposal.

However, there are psychological and physical misfires. It would be naïve to claim that you don’t physically tire at all. It just that your brain does not register the messages coming in from the nerves. It becomes a condition like leprosy, obviously not much as worse but a fair analogy, where even though there is physical atrophy, the loss fails at being communicated to the sensory. Gradually it starts to take toll on your mental capabilities. It all happens under the cover of an exponential increase of productivity, a heightened sense of ambiance and an amplified version of creativity. However, underneath it all you are exhausting your brains. It keeps pumping blood, it keeps churning material, it keeps delivering and in its over clocked state it forgets to remember that it is burning out.

This is where the final nail comes in. Suddenly you wake up from your euphoria of achievement and realize that there is a complete loss of sleep. There is a lingering feeling of fatigue underneath your thought process, there is a general numbness of consciousness and a mild muteness of senses. The body aches and the head throbs but you feel them as gentle vibrations under your feet. There is a sledge hammer beating at the walls of your head but the room is sound proof so what you hear is a tiny thud in place of a massive crash. This is where another deprivation of senses takes place, one against which the now aware mind attempts to revolt. At one end there is the conditioned perception of no need for rest and on the other is the consciousness of the need for sleep. It is the will built with time against the intellect of realization. Which one do I listen to or more aptly put what would the mind obey; the will or the logic? This is my battle against insomnia.