never say die

so, I am up, after staying up way too late, again, day before yesterday, working... which usually goes like "ag... it's 1am, I should sleep, ah, but lemme finish this tiny step"... "ah it's 2am now, but now I got a new idea, lemme implement just this one and I promise to go to sleep"... "it's 3am.. I should sleep, but wait... I know what went wrong, so lemme quickly fix it..." and now my body starts giving in... but my mind... well my mind has a mind of its own... Pretty soon the sky colors up, it is Montreal, the official sunrise time for today is 6:16am... I still have new ideas, I still have hunches on what I can correct... but I drag myself to bed...

I am up at 11am... have to be at school by 1pm to chair a meeting... Forget the CEPSUM, do I have time for a shower or not...? I jump in the shower because somewhere a little voice says "it's not polite to stink, specially in a meeting". The meeting goes ok, other than that someone accuses me of not speaking loud enough - me???? And the rest of the day, I spend like a zombie, my mind quite not upto the normal levels of logical capacity..., in a way rendering useless, the long extra hours last night that my body pleaded with my mind to please stop. One of the grad students, who's always been an insomniac, who I saw on skype all night long - he's been edgy for a couple days now, the sleep deprivation is finally getting to him. It is a land of the zombies. My speech slurs, I lose words - it is usually the most obvious sign of sleep-deprivation for me.

And I thought of that time that Ammi went everywhere looking for Ensure in Italy, even though it was pretty clear that we might not find it, and she finally found it. I thought of the way, again in Italy, a little after my mom's Ensure saga, I went looking for orange juice, and then walked about half an hour till I found any place that would sell orange juice... When I returned Malli said "what is it that makes you guys never quit?". That night I realized, I got this attitude from my mom...

Tonight I re-thought if it was really a personality strength or a weakness... While this "never say die" attitude is what got me here to where I am today, I am not sure if it is entirely necessary or even productive anymore. The strains my youthful 17year old body could handle, don't go so well with my body anymore. And yet I never seem to learn a lesson, never seem to be able to say, "this is it for today; tomorrow will be a fresher day". The few times I did that though, I was so very well rewarded, my stubborn mind, the very one that insists on keeping chugging on, felt fresher, and thought more clearly. After a good night's sleep, often, problems that were murky the night before, suddenly clarified. And yet, I behave the way I do... And my Exclusion Curves are not any better done, than if I had slept like a normal person...

In so many ways, I am as weak as a person who doesn't try at all, a person who can not get his mind focused on something. I can not let the focus go. We both have not tamed our minds...

And my other sleep deprived friend talked about how he had thought about going totally electricity free for one day a week. I think that would be a good start for me, a good first step to taming my mind and not feeling like someone else is in control... Maybe I will at least go computer/internet/phone free for a day of the week...