There’s a very good reason that I don’t feel entirely rested today. Okay, maybe not a very good reason, but a reason nonetheless, and it’s typical. Last night at 1:30 am, I wasn’t quite ready to turn off the TV and face my own thoughts in the dark. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with my thoughts, particularly, just that those thoughts are more likely to keep me awake than a few more minutes of mindless television.

Here’s the problem, though. Little Miss Sunshine was just beginning on HBO, and I started watching it. And I’d forgotten, in the year or so since I’d seen it, how much I loved it, and what a perfect movie it is. By the time 3:15 rolled around and the movie was over, I was ready to be alone in the dark with my happy thoughts. Or, more accurately, I was happy to be virtually thought-free and thus better able to sleep. Which I did.

And it would have been okay to get to sleep at 3:15 am if I’d been able to sleep in this morning. And there was no external reason that I had to get up early today, or at all for that matter. If I could have stayed asleep, I could have stayed in bed until noon, or until tomorrow. But something in my body woke me up at 8:00 am, and even though I didn’t get up until 9:45, any advantage of the day off was lost.

So that’s why I didn’t feel rested today. The fact that I pretty much did this to myself doesn’t matter. In the symphony of my life, this is one of the major recurring themes. I complain about sleep issues, but I don’t expect them to be solved, because any solution would change who I am and how I live, and I don’t want to be anyone else.

I respect and admire people who can get up at dawn and fall asleep before midnight. For much of my life, I wanted to be one of those people, because my way seemed somehow less virtuous. But that’s because this country was founded by Puritan farmers who burned witches, and I don’t feel I have much in common with them.

So now I embrace my inner night owl, and catch up on sleep when I can. Today it was during the games of the next-to-last Sunday of the NFL season, and I don’t think I missed much. The players didn’t seem any more into it than I was, from what I did see.