"For the first time in a long time, I don't feel like a zombie"
I’m planning on writing a long post to (re)describe the major events of the past year—a way to commemorate and close the book on the year starting last July 16th. And also, if all goes well, to celebrate going off my very last med, Keppra, which I take for “seizure-like” somethingerother that showed up on my very first EEG. Not that that itself will be easy. I have to replicate my condition from last year. I have to be sleep-deprived by not sleeping, period, the night of July 8th, as if my bachelor party the weekend before wouldn’t be enough to do the trick.
Anyway, sleep deprivation, actually at long last its restful opposite, is the topic today.
Today is a Sunday, and I got up, fully rested, at 7:30am. The past months since the end of treatment have marked a steady return in all parts of my life to what I long considered normalcy. And now I’m back, sleep-wise, to normal too.
Back when I worked at Houghton Mifflin, I used to get up earlier than really needed and head downtown to Torrefazione (now L’Aroma) to read and write. I did it because waking up early wasn’t hard, and I had this little voice saying, “Might as well get up, you can do something with your time.” I’d go to bed after 11, fall asleep in under half an hour, sleep straight through the night, and wake up a minute before my alarm went off. For my entire life, except for an exhausted stretch junior year of high school (Dr. Ochs’ AP History class + baseball + a play + a band + a girlfriend), sleep had always come that easily.
I’m finally back to that. I’m still not sure what the connection is between a good night’s sleep and the willingness to read and write—or other things that have come back with it, such as searching out good music again, calling up old friends on a regular basis again, repainting the office, challenging myself in general.
I know Lindsay would like it if this restedness translated into, oh, say, picking up after myself. But even she’s seen a change in herself at the same time—she just posted this tweet, not knowing that I was writing a post on the same topic:
Creativity is flowing again. I am writing and painting and designing. For the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like a zombie.
