Tigers and Titans

The Room at the End of the Hall

There's nothing really quite like being sleep-deprived in repeated days.  The sensation of being more tired than when you went to bed, concatenating on itself over and over through an entire week leaves you in a place that suggests that perhaps thinking shouldn't be your primary means of inspiration, as it tends to be lacking very seriously.

You see, with alcohol, it seems to disrupts your brain's ability to fully formulate thoughts.  Your synapses don't consistently fire, and the missed connections are like lag spikes in video games, without the sudden "catch up" that is experienced.  You simply miss small chunks here and there, and over time, you realize you can't see the full picture.  You can piece together little portions together and semi-understand what is going on, but the more you drink, the more you miss, and the more likely you are to interpret what is being missed.

With overt exhaustion, everything is just moving slower, in spite of how quickly things seem to go.  You remember it all later, but in the moment you are really just a passenger in the vehicle that is your mind.

That's where I am today -- a passenger, leaking from my face, my mind, my fingers.  I once wrote a short story about this frame of mind, which I experienced often in college.  The story went with a man trapped in a room with a door, a window, a light, and a light switch.  The closer he got to the window, the less real it became, and more like a TV you watched through.  The door was locked, and seemed to be locked by the light switch.  So turning off the light opened the door, but that would be bad, because something was trying to get in.  Something bad.  The version of me that takes over when I sleep.  And through my various musings with this creature, I've learned that him taking over would be a terrible thing.

Centuries of Storms

I had some friends from Arizona suddenly decide that they were going to be visiting Utah.  One would stay for 7 days, and the other for 10.  I made as many preparations as I could in the shorter timeline, given our current death march, my trying to provide some ease-of-mind for my colleagues, and still hitting the gym.

The gym was fine, but I was working harder for the 20 minutes, and still did poorer than even last time.  I was surprised at the end result, despite my larger sweat line.  I decided not to read to far into it, but maybe am now starting to realize something which may have played a factor.

I went to Costco after the gym to pick up bulk snacks and drinks for my department.  And while walking around I felt as though I had some phlegm built up in my throat, but couldn't dislodge it.  It also seemed to hang out right around the area that my throat seems to being pinched by my thyroid enlargement.  So with the pressing from my thyroid, or the growth on it, with this thick mucus now starting to cover up or inhibit the already inhibited air flow, I began to feel dizzy, short of breath, like I was inhaling hard, but only a little coming through.  My lungs were fine, so it wasn't asthma.  It was an entirely new sensation, and it gave me plenty of anxiety.  That coupled with oxygen deprivation, and physical fatigue from exercising, and I was having a very hard time.

I considered going home to take some prednisone, a lung steroid, because it would help to open my throat a bit, and maybe assist with clearing things up.  I decided to not go so far, and drank some caffeine, as it's supposed to do the same, but just not as severe.  The drink may have loosened or moved whatever it was past the internal obstruction, because I started to feel better pretty quickly.

But doing that, with exercise, stocking up work snacks, and then getting home around 8:30 to eat dinner, and then try and motivate myself to clean things up a bit was a rather difficult task.  A friend helped me out, as he regularly stays at my place, to avoid driving the 90-minute one-way distance home each day.  

And by the time they arrived, I had most things setup for them.  Greeting them, showing them their places to rest, and sending them the wireless connection details left me with about 5 hours left before my alarm was going to go off.  I still tossed and turned, per usual, slipping out of existence with just over 4 hours to spare, and kept being awoken by thunder.

Pooh Stuck in the Hole

The dreams were a bit stressful as well -- always in places with issues needing resolving, and asking where I can help, but nobody ever allowing me to.  I resolved to sitting nearby and watching the world unravel, not knowing what to do.

A storm rolled in, and I heard that it was quickly building into something that would have worried the chasers from the movie "Twister."  I jumped into my car, which looked to be what my mind would translate to be a Nova.  It barely started up when the call over my ham radio that increased friction in the air and sudden downpour of rain was causing frequent and powerful lightning blasts in the area.

I began to drive as the sky went from foreboding to outright destructive with the rain and other contents raining down.  I braced myself for a lightning blast, when one hit about a hundred feet up the road, and the brightness and impact made me temporarily deaf, and shook the earth around me.

I noticed I was driving on my street I grew up on in Uintah.  A nearby horse pasture was filled with people cutting down trees, with larger bases than my car, and explaining that in spite of the buckets of water, other areas reported fires burning stronger in the rain, and destroying entire towns.

Asking to help, I wasn't surprised to find I wasn't useful, and moved to the next area, just trying to track the storm and see if someone was caught off enough to warrant my presence.

It never happened, and I woke up with a nearby strike rumbling through the skies and catching me by surprise.

My alarm went off this morning, and nothing seemed fair.  I legitimately considered calling in for a half day just so I could get all my sleep, but decided against it.

And now here I am... trying to wake up, but never quite realizing just how asleep I really am.

-Your Semi-Retarded Friend