Don’t Let the Sun Set on Your Anger, Just Go to Sleep!

You tend to doze in front of the idiot box, barely watching the movie, name of which eludes you, is it “What lies beneath” or “Zodiac” or “Code Red” or what? Things blur. The sub-titles are hazy, you turn to your laptop and idly surf the internet just staring at the pages and cursing the net speed, you desperately keep your eyelids from closing while you type your blog post, you do your best to keep your nose off the computer screen and to keep the head from smashing into they keyboard, you take deep breathes and say “I will go to bed in a few minutes, this is the last,” but you linger on, not having the strength to drag yourself to the bedroom. Then you sit some more and sleep leaves you, you are fully awake and in a zone I call “dazed-and-dozing” where productivity is at a nadir and you make a lot of mistakes, simple sentences take hours to form, simple words seem to dance in your head but don’t travel down to your finger tips, you go from channel to channel, from site to site and wonder, “God, what’s all this stuff,” you are tuned out, done in, you are exhausted but can’t find rest, you are the epitome of fatigue and when you drop into your bed, you can’t sleep.

That was me a few weeks ago, and I was blaming the recession, the economy, global warming, the politicians, the media, the works!

A week ago I decided to go to bed early and get up early, just to break the monotony, break the pattern that I was falling into. Hmm... let’s see if the “early to bed...” maxim holds. I went to sleep at 10.30 p.m. slept soundly when sleep is at its strongest and found that I woke up naturally at 6.30 a.m. I surf a bit and found the speeds much better, even start this blog post (see, not many mistakes!). I do the morning rituals, take a bath, read the papers and catch the 8.08 a.m. Belapur local and lo and behold! get a window seat, which is an impossible feat around 8.45 a.m. and am in the office in time. (Earlier, I used to stand all the way to work and it made me irritated being pressed against so many hot sweating bodies, and would reach the office like a wet and fuming rag.) I have coffee at the Café Coffee Day at VT and read Outlook and a newspaper. I am more tolerant and I find I can concentrate better in the work; at least, I don’t have any irrational fears, and am sailing smoothly. I read two newspapers and a magazine, amazing! My, God! I didn’t realise how I could make time for all this.

Now for making this into a habit. I guess a lot of our problems centres around our inability to sleep on time. People don’t let the sun set on your anger, just go to sleep. I am not blaming politicians and the media anymore. I know, I know, they are doing their job, and if they don’t, they will get the fat end of the stick in their backsides. Look what happened to Jagdish T.

In the mean time, where’s that manuscript of mine that needs editing? Where’s the unfinished novel that has been gathering pixel-dust in some corner of my computer? Where’s the travelogue I need to polish to the finest texture of the craft of an Ibn Batuta or a Fa Hien?