Sleeping Softly

When on the job, the best thing you can do when sleepy is to not think about sleeping.
---Neena Barcelona

So I’m at work and I am dead tired. I cannot focus. I cannot think. I stayed up too late. My eyelids feel like two bumble bees have snuggled in tightly on each of them with their little bulb bodies wrapped up for warmth and comfort. I have contemplated twice of briskly walking to the bathroom, entering through the door, choosing the largest stall, cleaning off the largest stall’s ivory colored toilet seat and sitting down for a snooze. I’ve resorted to picking and biting the skin and exposed cuticle are my fingernails in this fight with the sluggish monster. He wants my blood and bones. I’ve resorted to being unproductive. He’s preventing me from getting on the phone.

This has to stop. In a desperate attempt to take back the control of my eyelids, I broke my water diet to drink a cup of Starbucks coffee with hazelnut cream. The hazelnut cream wasn’t a good idea. I’m not a coffee drinker, but my situation was and is dire. I continued to nod off until I went to the washroom not to sleep, but to douse my face with water. Before the water dousing, I sat at my desk trying to write down about twelve hospital names. During these attempts, I would jerk awake to find the blue ball point pen I was writing with relaxed in my hand at a slant on yellow tablet paper. It was embarrassing to look down at the words I had scribbled and not remember when I had written them.

Now that the coffee and water seems to be kicking in I can work, but I still wish that it was 2:15p and I only had an hour and forty-five minutes left to work. Today I’m going to change my 2009 life in several ways: 1. I will begin my writing regiment at 6p. 2. I will change my mind about attending AWP. 3. I will get some sleep. 4. I will think some more about my image and words post card idea. 5. I will be a better me. 6. I will remember how it felt when I had dreams. 7. I will smile when I think of how exciting my life is as an artist. 8. I will be grateful for the gift. 9. I will not be so Antoinette when it comes to creating and embrace Toni Kay. 10. I will, I will … I will be.

So like a thief in the night, the sleep that weighed on my back like a hog has vanished. I feel somewhat restored and ready to earn my pay. I feel like maybe there is some truth to the phrase ‘mind over matter’. Even though the sluggish monster has decided to lay dormant I’m still picking at the skin around my fingernails. Pick, pick, picking—well, maybe I’m half way there.