Afternoon Snooze (Not at Work) at Work

I don't get enough sleep. I've known this for years. Lately I've been getting up at 6:30 to either work out or write my daily entry, so I probably get five to six hours of sleep a night. For me that's enough to function fine, especially if I can make up for it on the weekends. But I always crash at some point in the afternoon, usually between 2:00 and 3:00. Given my normal-Joe work schedule, that crash always occurs at work.

It doesn't help that my edit suite is usually warmer than the rest of the office, or that my comfortable leather chair is set permanently to "recline", but neither of those are necessary conditions for my generally unavoidable daily desk pass-out. I'd probably still nod off for a few minutes in the afternoon if I was sitting on a bee's nest in the middle of a village of Arctic cannibals (to be fair though that might be because of the dart in my neck).

It just happens and I can't help it. It starts out with a general bleariness, a sort of haze that starts building up between my work and me. I find myself losing focus, unable to keep track of what I'm doing. Sometimes I'm not aware that it's happening. I just start fading in and out, redoing the same edit or re-watching the same footage over and over again. Eventually I realize that I'm fighting sleep, and that's when the fun begins. I love the changes in consciousness you go through will fighting sleep. The narrowing of your visual field. The phasing of awareness. The seeming leaps forward in time as awareness is briefly restored. The accompanying random thoughts, and the occasional mild auditory or visual hallucinations. The utter lack of control you have over your own faculties. It's all really fascinating stuff. And it culminates usually with a very brief, five minute snooze that resets my engine and reinvigorates me.

I'm usually good for the rest of the day afterwards. And I work enough overtime that I don't think anyone would begrudge me my ten minute psychedelic siesta. I don't always like being sleep-deprived, but I like what it does for my afternoons.