October 18, 2019 - News Post

I am writing this from bed at 3 a.m. Shall I walk you through my evening?

I shall.

I was quite proud of myself for going to sleep at a reasonable hour. It’s not often I sleep more than 6 hours, so I was thrilled to find myself on track for a full 7 hours and 36 minutes.

It’s not a matter of falling asleep, it’s a matter of finding the time. Like most people, I fall asleep the moment my head hits the pillow, sometimes earlier. I’ve never had trouble sleeping and never will. Seriously. I’m very good at sleeping.

So you can imagine my shock when I opened my eyes in the middle of the night.

Something was amiss. Dazed and disoriented, I realized that my head and feet were aimed at the corners instead of the ends of the bed. Since I have a wife that shares the bed with me, I was dangerously close to putting my face on her pillow. That simply wouldn't do.

With eyes closed and a general groggy demeanor, I lifted my head off the pillow and swung myself 45 degrees clockwise. It was as I executed this swing but I realized I was more disoriented I thought. Oh, and because I too often use degrees to describe diplomas and temperature, I’m going to use a clock analogy. Nothing confusing about that.

I was on my stomach, pointed at 10:00. I wanted to be at 12:00. My wife was at 9:00, and a wall was at 3:00. With me so far?

Half asleep, I lifted up on my elbows, and wound my head back to 9:30. And with the newly added momentum, I swung my head with all my might toward 12:00.

Thunk!!!

Turns out, I wasn’t at quite the angle I thought. I had been facing 2:50 the whole time. Instead of a smooth rotation from 9:30 to 12:00, I wound my face back and went full speed from 2:20 to 3:00. There was a cracking thud as my forehead and cheek made contact. I saw stars light up the otherwise dark room.

"Whaa?" My wife asked before immediately drifting back to sleep.

Despite smacking the hell out of my face, it wasn't too painful. It was, however, exactly what I needed for my body to activate its fight or flight response. Nothing quite like surging with adrenaline at 2 a.m. because my brain interpreted the wall as an enemy combatant.

Oops.

I hit hard enough to almost wake my wife up, but more than hard enough to wake myself up. I don't think I've felt an adrenaline rush quite like that in a while, so I won't question it too much. It did make it difficult to sleep, however.

I resisted using my phone for full hour. But here we are. It’s Wednesday night/Thursday morning, and I'm writing the news. My heart rate has calmed down, which is good. Yet I still have to think of a comic tomorrow, which is bad.

Something tells me that writing the comic will be even more physically demanding than the news.

...

It was.

-Jeff