Yesterday I had to stay up to finish a thing I was working on. And it was tough. No, not the thing that I was working on. But staying up.
So tough that I roamed around like a zombie in the house.
I have this friend who’s shacking up with me for a few days. And since this is a Mumbai house, he’s using the hall as his bedroom. The guy told me that I sort of scared him with all the feet that I was dragging along the entire night.
I just could not stay up. Despite my earnest efforts.
And it sucks. Suck so bad that I am blogging about it.
Thing is I have always taken pride in my ability to get by with little sleep or food or other such worldly comforts. I do need a lot of safai, water, and access to a clean loo. But lately, since I’ve got on the sleep-more bandwagon and have become that boring old man that sleeps at 10 and wakes up at 5, I am used to spending 7-8 hours on the bed. What I do there is anyone’s guess but I do try and be on the bed for that long.
Now, yesterday, when I had this important submission, I was initially unfazed. After all, I haven’t needed a lot of sleep. I thought it would be a cakewalk. And to make matters easy, I loaded my ref with Diet Coke, Diet Chiwda, Diet Air and Diet BS. Who could stop me?
Well, myself!
Thanks to my old age, I just could not focus on the task at hand. I would doze off even while I was walking around. I was bouncing off the walls. Literally. I drank I don’t know how much water and I don’t know how much I peed but I do know that by the end of it, I was so sick and tired of all the visits to the loo that I parked myself outside. And while I was parked there, I dozed off as well.
Thankfully, the work I was doing was a writing gig. And I remembered that if you are a writer, you do not let the piece make you its muse. Rather you make it your bitch and belt it out when you feel like. So, I decided that even though all odds are stacked against it. And I promised myself that I would not sleep unless I do it!
Just that my body clock and age had decided that they would make it tough for me.
However, I persisted and finished the piece. The lesson I took away from that is that as I age, health has started to become an increasingly important component. Thankfully I am a little stable in the head (I think) and thus I have been able to survive. Need to do a lot more work on my physical fitness. Will make 2020 about fitness. And that means food and working out. Things that I have traditionally ignored.
Will work on starting now! Wait and watch!
About 12 hours after I caught some sleep, I am still reeling from the effects of not sleeping. Even this piece is not the best that I’ve written. I HAVE to fix things!