After my long sabbatical from the working world, I am experiencing some severe challenges with reprogramming my body to meet the grueling demands of a traditional 9-to-5 job. It seems that, although I need to wake up at 6:30am, my body still doesn’t want to go to bed until about 1:30am. I don’t do well with five hours of sleep on a consistent basis. I’m not a kid anymore. I needs my sleep.

I thought that maybe I could catch up on some sleep this weekend, and kind of stock up for the week ahead of me. The best laid plans of mice and men. I got home pretty late on Friday night after an evening of karaoke hijinks, and had to get up early on Saturday to drive to my parents’ house because my brother and his family were in town. Then, after spending the day Saturday chasing after my nephews, I was all tuckered out and ready to fall into a deep, rejuvenating sleep that would carry me through this week.

That was the plan, at least. Until I noticed that there was a TV in the room I was sleeping in. A TV with cable. Digital cable. My mom knows that I have issues with a mild TV addiction, which is why I refuse to get cable! Why would she put me in that room? Why not leave me a crack pipe, a bottle of scotch, some chocolate cake, and a Playstation 2, while you’re at it?

I told myself that I would only watch a little bit of TV, and then go right to sleep. But then I flipped past the TV equivalent of a train wreck: The Surreal Life, starring Brigitte Nielsen, a guy from New Kids on the Block, and Flavor Flav. It was gruesome and disturbing, but I just couldn’t look away. As I watched the former sex-symbol star of Rocky IV roll around on the floor in a leopard swimsuit in her saggy 70-year old body and make blatant passes at the still gold-toothed and giant clock-wearing Flavor Flav, I just felt funny inside. Kind of like I needed a shower. When Flavor Flav serves as the moral compass on a reality TV show, you just have to ask what the world is coming to.

So here I am, Tuesday morning of Week Two, and I can barely drag myself out of bed. I think I have developed a mild obsessive-compulsive disorder because my exhaustion has made me afraid of sleeping late and missing work and getting fired and ending up right back where I started so many months ago. To combat that fear, I am now using two alarm clocks, which I check and re-check no less than four times each night to ensure that they are, in fact, set for 6:30am and not 6:30pm.

I only drink decaf, so I can’t count on coffee to pick me up in the morning. I am contemplating taking up smoking, because isn’t nicotine a stimulant? I’ve heard that exercising is supposed to give you energy, but that defies all logic to me, so I suspect it’s just a propaganda campaign launched by Bally’s Total Fitness. I saw what my friends looked like after they ran that 5K the other night, and let me tell you, “refreshed” and “energetic” are not two words that come to mind.

I guess I’ll have to rely on what my friend Seamus told me gets him through the day: shotgunning a couple cans of Red Bull first thing in the morning.

Filed under: J.O.B. on September 28th, 2004