fleeting passions

Sometimes, I surprise even myself. I might not be one for pushing my limits to prove something to people (I’m too lazy for that), but when I find something that I want, there is a chance, however remotely, that I will do it, or try to get it, even without actually being conscious of doing it.

These past few weeks I’ve been having this conversataion with myself about my sleeping habit. I’m not proud to say this because I know it isn’t a healthy thing to do and I know I might just be making myself unhealthier than I already I am, but I’ve been cutting on my sleeping hours since the middle of this year. In the past, I might have stayed way past my usual bedtime to finish a book I just couldn’t put down, but such instances were rare, and mostly I only did it on weekends because I knew I didn’t have to get up early the following day. But this time (and I’ve just started to realize I might be obsessing about not sleeping), it is different. When I stayed up, I really wouldn’t do something important, just watch some animes or play computer games (spider solitaire, hangAroo, bookworm – not really that interesting that they make me forget the time), or just sit in front of the computer and listen to some music. It would have been all right if I still read, but I don’t anymore. At first, I tried to schedule my no-sleeping-until-I-hear-the-neighbor’s-roosters-crow habit from Thursday until Sunday. From Thursday because, well, it is near the weekend. On any other weekday, it’s a no-no. I can’t afford to take a three-hour nap at the office now, can I? Besides that, I am never one for napping at the office or at any place with many people milling about, no matter how much I need to do it. Lately, though, I’ve turned my (bad) habit into an every day thing. As a result, I only get about two to three hours of sleep every day. I get worse on weekends. Sometimes I would try to catch up on the hours of sleep I lost by sleeping around twelve hours straight. No food, no water, no nothing in between. But then usually after that (I often treat myself to a sleeping binge on Saturdays), I purposely don’t get any sleep until around thirty hours later. After that, it would be my usual two-three-hour-of-sleep-only-every-day habit. I don’t really know why, but every time I so much as think of sleeping earlier than usual, say between twelve and two am, my brain would balk and would proceed to innocently point out the obscenity of that idea. That would, of course, have me drowning at least two mugs of coffee and staring at the computer monitor for three to four more hours. Somehow, I find this depriving myself of sleep ironic, because, you see, there was a time when I used to sleep a lot and thought that sleep was one of the most precious commodities money couldn’t buy.