Sleeping always seems to me to be a waste of valuable time. There are so many other things a person could be doing, especially at night when it’s quiet.

There are books I’ll never get a chance to read, and movies I don’t have enough time to watch. If I didn’t have to sleep, my house might even be clean. Surely with a few extra hours a day, I would have scrubbed the soap scum out of the tub and shampooed the formerly white carpet. I probably still wouldn’t have dusted, but that’s just me.

Every night I seem to test my theory. And whenever I successfully avoid sleep long enough at night, I refute the hypothesis the next day by falling asleep at my desk. Today was one of those head-bobbing days when the computer screen was swimming in front of me most of the time. I couldn’t make myself fall asleep last night, and I could make myself stay awake today.

So obviously, I’m wrong. Some benefit comes from sleeping. It’s just hard to convince myself of that when I’m finding one more excuse (after another after another) to stay up every night. The facts get in the way. The consequences are too remote to keep me from self-destructive behavior. Tomorrow is just a myth, until it gets here.

Alas, it always gets here way too soon.

One thing that keeps me going deep into the night is the fear that some of the programs saved by TiVo will be deleted before I get a chance to watch them. That might not be the worst thing that could happen. If I get three weeks behind on Medium, maybe that means I’m not that into the show. On the other hand, I’d hate to lose any episodes of East Enders, because I’m pretty sure channel 54 isn’t going to rerun any of them. Is it any wonder I’m up all night so much of the time?