Year 2 - Day 151 - Sleep Deprived

I discovered today - while playing around with my health app on my phone - that I'm sleep deprived, and this is most likely the root cause of the irritability, apathy, brain fogginess, and feeling ever so slightly off.

I figured this out, when I put in that I go to bed at around roughly 11-11:30pm and wake up roughly between 5:45 and 6:30 am during the week resulting in between 5-6:30 hrs of sleep as opposed to the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep. This has got to stop. So tonight's goal is to go to bed at around 10 pm, and get up at around 6 AM. That should give me close to 7, at least.

**

I entertained myself today by watching this happening outside my living room/office window:



[For anyone who can't see the photo - it's two guys hanging siding on a house.]

And I took a brief walk of sorts. Tortured myself by looking at folks vacation and socializing pics on Instagram. Which make me cringe. One guy was in very close proximity with a bunch of kids (not his own) on a ferry filled with people from an island religious retreat. I wonder sometimes if I'm living in bizzaro world. Is it just me or has the world become increasingly surreal? It's as if one group knows that a pandemic is still going on, and the other group has forgotten about it completely.

**

Anyhow, I'm sleep deprived and tired and irritable.

Worked from home today - a good thing, since my digestive system decided to have a conniption fit.

Good night.

Random picture for tonight.

The last Governor's Email ....arrived tonight

( the last Governor's email or Coronavirus Update )

I felt I should commemorate it somehow. I'll miss them. And they are evidence that people are, alas, more than one thing. A man can be guilty of sexual harassment and a bully, yet still care about the lives in his state and want to save them.

I learned this lesson years ago. Or rather I've learned it repeatedly I guess. But the memory that stands out for me - is when I was interning at the Kansas Defender Project, and I sat beside a man who committed felony bank robbery - this is basically armed bank robbery -- waiting for his parole hearing. We had a long discussion, and I realized he was more than one thing and I was far from qualified to judge him. He struck me as kind, thoughtful, and considerate. I liked him. And, I remember him telling me that the worst thing about prison was those you have to serve time with - that there are people who've done things that made him cringe.

I also remember, a man, a brilliant artist and poet, who was in solitary confinement. I looked at his artwork and struck by the beauty of it, a fragile bird in a window, a poem about the bird that would make you cry. My colleagues were defending his rights and trying to get him out of solitary confinement, arguing it was inhumane. When I asked why he was in it? They informed me that he'd knifed two other inmates for the thrill of it. And he was a sociopath. Yet, his artwork...seemed to say otherwise.

It's a cognitive dissonance I've experienced over and over in my life. That people can surprise and disappoint often at the same time. Do horrible and wonderful things. Can we really define them by only one action? And if so which one? How on earth can we begin to know which actions to choose?

What amazing and bewildering creatures humans are....undefinable and uncatagorizable, yet determined to do both to each other.