Who Needs Sleep?

"i do not have ADD," is a phrase i subconsciously keep telling myself again and again. "i don't have ADD." if i tell myself often enough, maybe it won't be true. i've never been officially tested, but sometimes i just have to wonder if some of my less endearing habits are only symptoms of a larger mess. every once in a while i feel like i am being honest enough with myself to take a critical approach to my own character and i wonder if i have weaknesses that remain as of yet undisclosed. the people who know me best also let me know that i'm not the only one who suspects that i have attention deficit disorder.

i will admit that i have a hard time getting my brain to settle down at certain times. if there is a task that is sufficiently large or complex, i have a hard time getting finished if i can't imagine the end in my own mind. my mind races back and forth trying to find the viewpoint where all of the intermediate steps can be seen. i stall in dissatisfaction rather than accepting limited foresight in order to move on with what is presently available. some of the more intricate projects are even hard to start because my stream of thought gets caught in an eddy of its own making as i cycle through the possibilities of what might be "the best way" to tackle the challenge. there is an overdraft on my mental resources, as i try to estimate the most economic solution to the end goal.

on a smaller scale, i lose way too much stuff and i know it's not because my brain isn't capable enough to hold on to information. sometimes i think i have more than a knack for remembering trivia, from pop culture on down to stories i've heard from friends and roommates. then there are important daily things like my glasses, credit card bills or my car registration, my keys or whatever else was in my hand when i got out of the car that get put in "safe" places but my mind is too busy to take any notice. soon enough, i'm off again on another search for today's lost object.

somewhere in between these two examples lie the procrastination, the general disorganization of my personal space, the seeming need for constant stimulation - the feed from wearing headphones plugged into an mp3-player most of the day generally provides enough stimulation to calm down my mind. then there is the difficulty i've had my whole life of going to bed. growing up i HATED going to bed and i still have a hard time talking myself into laying down at a reasonable hour.

i can't go to bed unless it's the last thing i can do and my body is too tired to let my mind stay awake. i can have a relatively full and long day, but i will still need about an hour to myself just to complete a series of "one more thing"s that will let my mind be settled once my head hits the pillow. i know that if i go to bed too early, my mind will just get caught in a whirlwind of useless thought. there were years when i had to listen to music so i could stay still enough to fall asleep. the music would give my mind a constant stream of information to concentrate on, but not too much information in which i can get entangled. later i got an eBook reader and i could sit in the dark and read as the words would direct my mind into a calm long enough for my body to take over. i'd eventually fall asleep; the reader and my brain eventually turning themselves off.

after emptying my pockets onto the table beside my bed...

¿how did i get so many pennies?
pennies aren't very useful.
¿was the silver dollar more useful?
i haven't seen a 50¢ coin in a long time.
the 50¢ coin has a good weight for a coin toss, even better than a quarter.
there are a lot of cultural uses of the coin toss.
a coin toss is a good choice for 50/50 option
what about the percentages for a die? -- 16.67% -- that's not very clean
what about two dice?
Still messy - doesn't account for 1 and there's only one way to get a 2, a 3, an 11 or a 12 but lots of ways to get a 4, 5, 6 or 7
9.09% is just a messy percentage
what about even/convenient percentages? -- 5%, 10%, 25%, etc.
i guess they make 10 and 20 sided dice
Weezer has that song
¿what about thirds -- can you get 33%?
¿can you get a three sided object?
"I've got a Dungeon Master's Guide, I've got a 12-sided die..."
a pyramid - oh that's four sides
four sides is good for a one if four chance.
"...I've got Ace Frehley, I've got Peter Criss..."
1/2, 1/4, 1/10, 1/20
¿do dice have to come in even-numbered sides?
how can you make a 3 sided die?
"...in the garage, Where I belong..."
i guess a coin technically has 3 sides if you count the edge.
You could just use 6 sided die and count 1 and 2 as equaling 1, 3 and 4 equaling 2, and 5 and 6 equaling 3
there was that football game when the opening coin toss had the coin stick in the ground on it's edge. "...No one hears me sing this song..."
you could make a 3 sided die if you made it spindle-shaped.
¿what is the percentage likelihood that a coin would stick on it's edge?
¿how come only biology texts use the phrase "spindle-shaped"?...

yes, i'm going to be up for a while, but i'm still not going to get tested for ADD. instead, i will still have my headphones plugged into my ears most of the day and i will still have to read myself to sleep most nights. i will continue to work on getting myself to do something now, even if i can't wrap my brain around all of the future possibilities. and finally, i'll keep going to bed when i can't do anything else and then, maybe, i will prevent my mind from hijacking the opportunity to get a full night's sleep.

even better than that, i just might be able to avoid the whole mess of convincing myself AGAIN that there is NO WAY to make an all-wheel-drive bicycle.

Warning Signs

there are those moments when you can just feel that something isn't quite right. the feeling often arrives in the late afternoon or into the evening. you've been feeling fine all week, but you can't ignore those little hints that you'll be sick by this same time tomorrow.

maybe your eyes are a little itchy, or your throat is starting to tense up. your voice is absent of any kind of rasp or whisper right now, but there is a clear threat of a desertion within the next few days. a peculiar sensation registers in the hitherto unknown sensory receptors of your nose that tells you that you'll be giving up your sense of smell in exchange for being completely stuffed up by the time you wake up the next morning. ¿how does your nose know this? you can feel all these little half-symptoms and precursors of what will rise up as a full blown menace the next day, and you know that there's nothing you can do about it. you'll try the home remedies. you'll take some medicine in advance. you'll sleep just fine tonight, but you'll wake up tired and sick.

i wish there were some sense of purpose to these warning signs. it's not like a traffic cop giving you a warning to slow down or you'll pay the consequences. instead, it's the broad, evil grin of a practical joker who has completely cracked and they're looking at you straight in the eye. you know that no matter how many times you check under your bed, behind the doors, or in the closet, you will eventually "find" the "surprise" and you won't like it. something evil is lurking, and the event is non-negotiable. about all these warnings do for me is extend the suffering by adding a sense of inevitable doom. ¿why does being sick have to taunt you like that?

just the other night, i could tell something was coming on. i could hardly sit still. my hands were all fidgety, and i couldn't concentrate on anything. i couldn't think straight, with the same thoughts going over and over in my head. i'd have to keep a foot wiggling or something like that in order to get a few things done. rocking myself back and forth, i knew i was done for. it was going to be a full blown case of autism by morning.