How Long Can I Last?

I had to pull an all-nighter at work last night to try to get some books to the sales floor. The usual amount of skids of books that a store will have at any given time is zero to four. For some reason my staff tends to hover around ten to fourteen constantly. Usually they work from 6 AM until the early afternoon. In order to have extra shelving time without customer interruption, we occasionally schedule an overnight for the inventory team. They were able to get very little accomplished, because two thirds of the team are slackers, but that's not what I came here to talk to you about.

I went into work at 9 PM last night, and left at 8:30 this morning. It is now 10:25 AM and I will need to be back at work at 10 AM tomorrow. I'm contemplating staying awake until about 10 PM tonight so I can get back to a regular sleep schedule, but I'm feeling a little weird right now. It's a little similar what I understand the DT's to be like. I keep seeing bugs crawling around me. I'm jumpy and a little afraid.

My normal rhythm (in addition to the mambo) is a twenty-six hour day. I like to sleep for nine hours, and be awake for seventeen. This tends to push my nights back further each day, and I usually end up sleeping only 5 hours one night per week to try to get back into form with the rest of the world. I've got to find another planet to live on. To radically alter my day like this, however, throws my whole system out of wack.

For some reason I get heartburn when I stay awake. Next, I start to doubt that reality is really real. I'd be willing to bet at this moment that I'm in fact the Gingerbread Man. If the police arrest me for running down the street naked, I wouldn't be at all surprised. I can't feel my feet, but they keep waving to me.

I've known people who have been able to go a couple of days without sleep, but as soon as I hit 18 hours awake, I get the shakes. Right now I'm at 21. I'm in steady decline and I'm having a hard time trying to figure out if I'm awake right now or having a really boring dream about blogging. I know that if I go to sleep now, I'll have an impossible time waking up again before 8 PM. If that happens, I won't be able to get to sleep again until 4 AM on Tuesday. If I can stay awake until the early evening, I won't mind sleeping twelve hours straight.

Arrrrrrgh! Morpheus, take me!