The past two days have been unusually exhausting. I’m not sure if it’s Chas’ being sick, or missed sleep or, quite simply, Ford, but I rarely feel so mentally drained. I sit down to write, and feel nothing. It’s a dull, cottony feeling. I type three sentences, erase two. Type ten sentences, erase eight. I am not making any sense, and my stomach feels sour.

It’s not so bad being tired and numb, but it’s awful being blind to what’s running underneath, although I have a feeling it’s symptomatic of sleep deprivation. I’m standing in a pitch dark cave without a headlamp`, groping for a wall to guide myself towards someplace concrete, and hopefully in the direction of light, although I’d be content just to feel a wall to lean on and hug. Why can’t I just sleep at night, when it is dark? Why does my body want to stay awake, even if my mind is asleep? What little time there is to claim, after they have all gone to bed, is very little in exchange for the sacrifice of mental clarity (or something remotely similar).

So tonight (and for the next week) I am signing off an hour earlier. I want to see what happens when I redistribute the weight on the scales. It is 11:15pm, and the laundry is piled up, the toys are still scattered across the house, there may be a pile of spaghetti on the kitchen floor: I am TOO tired to tackle it now, and power to the bug that discovers it first. I’ll clean up in the morning.