To Sleep Perchance to Dream
1170, 1171, 1172, 1173. I really stopped counting after 1000. But I went back and checked to see that today’s post is number 1173. They just keep on coming. And it’s a lot of freaking words, mostly about food.
That’s on top of the words I write about food for The Chef’s Consortium and All Over Albany.
Some people have asked how I have the time to get it all done. And it’s a fair question. The short answer is that this has pretty much become my hobby. The old hobby involved video games. And I would stay up late at night playing Halo and other similar shoot-em-up team-based games with my friends on the West Coast.
Now I stay up late at night ranting into my laptop about misguided restaurant menus, magnificent local foods, maligned national brands, and much much more.
But there’s a problem.
The hobby has changed, but I’m still staying up far too late at night. And as I’m getting older, this is taking more and more of a toll on me physically. You may find this weird, but I’m kind of addicted to it.
I’ve stayed up late since I was in grade school, sacrificing sleep for pretty much anything else that was not sleep. The ironic thing is that I really enjoy sleep. But I enjoy the still, quiet, alone time that exists almost exclusively in the overnight hours even more.
Sure, it also exists in the wee early hours of the morning. And it’s true that on those rare occasions that I’ve been compelled to wake up at some ungodly early hour, I’ve encountered a similar peace.
But I’m not a morning person.
Up until now, my process for the last few years has been to put the kids to bed, have some kind of evening activity, and then eventually sit down to write. Depending on the activity, I’ve found myself at the keyboard with nothing on deck for the next day as late as 12:30 a.m.
A reasonable person might just go to bed and skip the next day’s post. But I don’t like missing a day of this blogging thing. So I would just stay up another couple hours banging out a few hundred words about some terribly pressing food-related problem. Sure, I’d only get four hours of sleep. But I could function fine on that. For a while.
The big problem was that I could function on four hours of sleep. So I’d find myself waiting until 12:30 a.m. before I even started writing multiple times per week to the point where I can’t recall the last time I went to bed before midnight.
This has to change.
I’m instituting a strict bedtime, starting now. At 12:30 a.m. on school nights, I turn into a pumpkin. This may prove to have a deleterious effect on my daily posts, but I hope it doesn’t. I hope that I can find a way to be more efficient in my writing. Should efficiency fail me, perhaps you will find a blast from the past re-blogged or some shorter post than you have come to expect from the FLB. Frankly, I’ve gotten a bit long-winded lately anyhow. Maybe I’ll even resort to pictures.
We’ll call this baby steps. The goal is to have it all. Get more sleep, write new content daily, and continue to get out in the evenings to preserve my sanity. Who knows what will happen. But hopefully I’ll stop falling asleep at my keyboard while I’m trying to write something halfway intelligent.
I just wanted you to know, just in case you happen to notice things looking a little different in the weeks to come. Thanks for letting me take this time for a little more self-indulgent introspection.
More food talk tomorrow.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 
I am very similar in my desire to stay up late.. I’m a night owl for sure. My mom used to catch me reading until the wee hours when I was a kid. Never being an early riser, I’m surpised she didn’t put a stop to that, but instead was forced to drag my sorry ass out of bed for school.
I noticed right around two years ago or so, I started needing to go to bed earlier. Now at 40, I’m in the sack by 11 or 11:30 unless it’s a weekend. People tell me this is very late to go to bed.. but I’m feeling much better about my own bed time knowing yours is later!
I write when I have something to write about. If I forced it my posts would contain even more garbage then they already do. One post a week can be just as good as 7 if the content is quality. Unless you are chasing the arbitrary hit-count beast, I advise you to only write posts when inspired.
I also punish my body for reasons I don’t understand and stay up as late as possible. usually I am reading your blog posts (and others) instead of writing them. I have no idea what drives me to do this.
I am confused about the Chef’s consortium. Looks like it was a dead blog and then you started writing…? Why put the effort into reviving that instead of adding onto things that are already working? btw, your link in the post goes to an empty list on the site.
And Mr. DAve, My guess is Daniel doesn’t run out of ideas too easily, there are too many things that piss him off, and always a few things that excite him.
Sounds like my husband — I’m a night owl, too, but when it comes down to it, my physical need for sleep is greater than my motivation to stay up most of the time. I’m in bed around 12:30 most nights (while my husband, who has to work hours earlier than I do, crawls into bed at 1, or 2, or occasionally 4).