{"id":1416,"date":"2006-03-23T12:51:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-23T20:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2006\/03\/23\/running-on-empty\/"},"modified":"2006-03-23T12:51:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-23T20:51:00","slug":"running-on-empty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2006\/03\/23\/running-on-empty\/","title":{"rendered":"Running on Empty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the last couple of weeks, I have not been getting enough sleep.<\/p>\n<p>I should preface this by saying that I&#8217;m pretty sure I&#8217;ve been running a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stanford.edu\/~dement\/sleepless.html#debt\">sleep debt<\/a> since high school.  I remember once staying up all night, and staying on the phone with a friend, to finish a physics problem set.  We met behind the band room at 7:00 AM to write up our answers, then unpacked our instruments and joined our bandmates on the field for practice.<\/p>\n<p>More generally, I always liked staying up late, probably because that&#8217;s when everyone else was asleep, and I was free to do whatever I wanted without interference or comment from others.  Even if that was something as mundane as sitting on the couch and reading a book.<\/p>\n<p>My senior year, I tried out for the part of Sky Masterson in Guys &#038; Dolls, mostly because I wanted to sing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stlyrics.com\/lyrics\/guysanddolls\/mytimeofday.htm\">&#8220;My Time of Day&#8221;<\/a>.  I didn&#8217;t get the part.<\/p>\n<p>But enough about high school.<\/p>\n<p>For the last couple of weeks, D has been involved in an <strike>FDA<\/strike> audit at work, and had to get to work earlier than usual&#8211; at least half an hour, sometimes more than an hour earlier.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re a one-car family, and my office is located between our house and her work, so she drops me off in the morning and picks me up at night.  This means I&#8217;m usually at work for close to 10 hours each day, but last Thursday and Friday, it was more like 12, and I had to set my alarm for 6:00 AM.<\/p>\n<p>Left to my own devices, I&#8217;ll happily stay up until almost 2:00 AM on a weeknight&#8211; usually just screwing around online&#8211; before I notice that the heater&#8217;s no longer running (the thermostat is timed to shut down at 11:00 PM) and it&#8217;s damned cold.  That doesn&#8217;t work if I have to get up four hours later.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a couch in my shared office at work, and I actually took a nap on it one afternoon.  I used to love taking afternoon naps in college, and still enjoy doing so on weekends or vacations.  But it&#8217;s not really practical at work.<\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s the unoriginal-metaphor part of the post: there aren&#8217;t enough hours in a day for everything I want to do&#8211; sleep, work, play.  It&#8217;s a microcosm for life, wherein we don&#8217;t ever have enough time for&#8211; anything.<\/p>\n<p>To quote <span style=\"font-style:italic;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.godamongdirectors.com\/scripts\/blader.txt\">Blade Runner<\/a><\/span>: &#8220;I want more life, fucker.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Choice is not always freedom.  Because my time is limited, I&#8217;m <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">forced<\/span> to choose how to spend it.  Even choosing <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">not<\/span> to choose is an implicit choice.  (Not to go all <a href=\"http:\/\/www.egodeath.com\/MysticStateAllusionsRush.htm#_Toc64392150\">Neil Peart<\/a> on you or anything.)<\/p>\n<p>Wow, I&#8217;m really rambling here.  This post is even more of a mess than usual.<\/p>\n<p>I need to get some sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the last couple of weeks, I have not been getting enough sleep. I should preface this by saying that I&#8217;m pretty sure I&#8217;ve been running a sleep debt since high school. I remember once staying up all night, and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[1,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}