Sunday, November 07, 2021

Groundhog Hour

If you battle insomnia at times, you can understand the existential horror of the situation.

Despite going to bed dead tired somewhere around eleven o'clock, your eyelids flutter open at...glance at the clock on your iPad by the bed...quarter after one in the morning.

Screwing your eyes tightly shut and counting sheep gets you nowhere, so you open your Kindle copy of The Big Sort, hoping some very serious nonfiction* will speed you on your way back to the Realm of Nod.

The clock in the upper left corner of the iPad's screen says it's 1:35AM as you start reading. Digging in to Bishop's tome, you resolutely turn virtual pages, waiting for your eyelids to sag. 

Check the clock. It's 1:55AM. 

Return to the book. Another chapter down. Sweet slumber continues to evade you. Plow through the text.

Check the clock.

1:25AM.

What fresh hell is this?

I'm not going to lie, gentle reader, there was a heartbeat there where I was sure my clutch had started slipping for good and I'd descended into some Kafka-esque horror before I remembered it was just the night of the Autumnal Clock Juggle.


*I like chewy nonfiction as much as the next nerd, but it has a time and that time is not normally when one is fending off the sandman.