Sleep, Where Art Thou?

Sleep has always been a funny thing for me. It's the thing I hate giving into at night yet hate letting go of in the morning. Whether luxury or necessary evil, sleep is also what I've been living with in short supply lately. For the past few weeks I've been dealing with insomnia, last week being the worst where I averaged 1-3 hours of sleep per day for over a week. Well it's all fun and games until you forget where you're going in traffic.

It didn't help the situation that I'm by nature a night owl and love being awake at night. There's just something very peaceful about being up while the city sleeps and watching the morning light break the night sky can be worth staying up for too. Also, I'm just more productive at night - that's when I'm best able to get things done. And finally, I work so much that if there's something that needs to get done, basically night is the only time for it to happen.

What can start out as annoying, not being able to sleep, can soon feel like I dose on invincibility - feeling super-charged and rarely tired by night or day. But finally the breaking point comes when the ability to function properly during the waking hours becomes impaired and rest becomes imperative. That's where I found myself last weekend - sleep necessary but still unattainable. However, by Sunday the spell of sleeplessness was finally broken and rest has been coming in large doses since then.

After a two month break, I returned to running after work this week, further ensuring my exhaustion and ability to slip into sleep at night. So, gone are my nights of being up until 4:30 or 6:30am, for now at least. I'm slightly sad to part with the night and I hate that I'm too worn out to get much done in the evenings, but sleep can be good too. At my former apartment, scrolled across the side of the fridge was "Sleep is a weapon." Guess someone else needed to be reminded of that too.