It’s early and I’m sleepy. I don’t remember feeling this way before. When I close my eyes to blink, the blink takes a long time. It’s not that I’m blinking slowly—it’s very difficult to control the speed of your blink. Try it if you don’t believe me. It’s more that once I close my eyes they don’t want to open again. Throughout the day, I caught myself momentarily sleeping. With my eyes closed everything felt desirable and warm and proper in that everything is right with the world if I just keep my eyes closed kind of way. Sleep pulled me down toward its dark maw. I resisted, it not being sleep time and everything. I forced open my eyes, imagining tiny replicas of the Jaws of Life they use in car wrecks. It didn’t have that satisfying metal grating sound, however. I guess there is only so much my imagination can manage when I’m sleepy.

I slept a full night again last night. That’s two straight full night’s sleep. That’s a strange expression, “night’s sleep.” Does the sleep belong to the night? Or maybe it’s “nights sleep.” Word doesn’t seem to think that’s correct. It underlined the words with green and blue squiggles. Either way, it is clear that I need more sleep. I’ve become a true believer in the truths of sleep debt. There’s too much in the way of red ink on my ledger. I miss the days of ledgers. Not that I would have ever used one (heck, I never even used my check register). But the idea of a large book with all of my finances written in small print in little boxes seems somehow soothing. I guess I played Accountants too much as a little kid.

I don’t know what’s going to happen when I finish with the sleep debt and the jetlag, and the weather stabilizes. I’ll have nothing to spend paragraphs complaining about. I guess at that time I’ll switch back to consternating about my lack of writing. Well, seeing as I’m keeping to my goal, it’s not exactly a lack of writing, it’s more a lack of storying. Once I story again I won’t need to worry about the consternation because I won’t have time for it. Imagine that: spending so much time and effort telling stories about imaginary people that I barely have enough time to tell stories about myself. Yup, the world would be a better place when that happens. I find that imaginary people live much more interesting lives than me. I’m a bit green about it. Or is it pink or blue or lavender? I always forget envy’s color.

The story draft below is a snippet that went nowhere. I always thought nowhere would be an interesting place. After visiting it, I can honestly say it’s not all I expected.