I woke up early and worked all day. Had very little lunch but instead of eating dinner at eight pm as I normally do, I went to sing with my friends until around eleven thirty in the night. I got home feeling good from the music but tired from the long day of activity. I made some food to satisfy the gnawing in my stomach and started watching the most recent episodes of a series as I ate. I continued in a state of curiosity and addiction until three thirty am. I decided I must sleep or else I would not be able to be up in time for class at ten am the next morning.
I had read, earlier in the week, that the human brain needs only 120 minutes of deep, non-REM sleep to feel refreshed. I tried meditating myself into a state of deep relaxation but I was wide awake and couldn´t quiet myself down. By this time, the sky was brightening and just as I began to doze, the birds got louder and louder in their morning happiness. I got up to close the windows and get my eye mask to keep the light out. The room got warm without the air circulation and the eye mask felt tight around my head. It was not helping either that my hair was in two braids nor that my pillow was always at the wrong angle and depth. I tried lying on my back, lying on one side and then the other, then with my face down and found none of the postures comfortable. I felt like I wanted to get up and work again. I briefly considered going to work at five am and working until class and returning at twelve for lunch and then a nap but thought better of it. I only got to sleep later when I stopped worrying so much about being able to sleep and started breathing regularly. It must have been around six am.
I was up at quarter to nine. I had missed too many of these classes to miss another one because of my crazy sleep experiments.
Everything is bright and only half real. Ideas lie incomplete in my head and follow no clear order. My cognitive capacities are sub-optimal and my mind wanders. Small emotions are amplified until I feel the urge to say strange contradictory things, jump around, squeal and laugh like crazy. The effort it takes not to do these things frustrates me. Social order and norms frustrate me. I feel restless and scattered.
I want more. I want something that will transcend everything; fascinating new music, mind blowing ideas, something spiritual. Something that will mean something. Nothing seems to have real purpose or reason anymore. What is the point? Why are we here? Are we just pawns in a genetic game called evolution? Do our minds and individual potentials matter at all?
A sleep deprived mind is perfect to wonder on about these unanswerable questions. To stare at the leaves on the trees that sway to the breeze and just let the internal fluctuations of one´s neuronal firings entertain you.