Sleeping hard

I do not experience insomnia very often, but I'm certainly up early this morning, and it's too late to go back to bed.

This is what insomnia looks like to me:

Soft-boiled eggs, with a generous dollop of butter. Usually a little softer than the ones pictured above, which I ate about fifteen minutes ago. (You can see a bit of the chipped Sheinhardt Wig Company logo on the coffee mug I bought at the NBC store in New York City.)

When I wake up at night and can't get back to sleep, I usually boil a couple of eggs. Because I can't do this in a hotel room, insomnia in hotels is tough.

Not sure why I couldn't sleep. One reason might be that I am thinking about a couple students who are failing the Basic English class I'm teaching, and feeling sorry for them, and angry about the grade schools and high schools they attended. For what are no doubt complex reasons, these people came through the system with extremely low skills and extremely unrealistic hopes. I can't fix this, but wish I could. I also wish that so many people were not convinced that a college degree is the magic key to a wonderful life.

Ah well. I'm not awake because I'm excited about the holiday party at work today - one of three work parties we have this time every year. A free lunch is nice, sure - but not nice enough to wake me up.

Whatever the reason I am awake now, I predict that I will be sleepy on the train ride back to Willow Grove this evening. This happens even on days when I've slept well the night before (meaning most days). 

But it's an odd kind of sleep, sleeping on the train. Lots of people do it, on both the morning and evening commute. Many of them look as though they are thinking about a tough problem while they sleep, heads slightly bent, lips tightly pursed, frowning. I think this might be because they (we) are in an odd sleep state, part of our consciousness keeping track of the train's progress while another part is dreaming.

And boy, do I dream on the train. I have brief, vivid dreams, which I seem to slip into almost immediately, and which vanish just as quickly when the train gets to my station. It's very unlike the normal nightly ritual of drifting off to unconsciousness, which is so easy and pleasant that I truly look forward to it every night. In fact, I often try to be aware of when the shift from waking state to sleep state arrives - it is so nice, a little delightful aaahhh moment, a gift at the end of each day.

Sleeping on the train is nothing like that, perhaps because a person sitting on a train cannot relax his or her body as thoroughly as in bed. Sleeping on the train is hard sleep; it feels like a task. The dreams often seem like puzzles I need to solve, strange pointless puzzles. It is not refreshing.

So I'll probably be doing that this evening between five and six - sleeping hard, my mind creating weird scenarios that keep it poised in a strange place where I am aware of the station stops and the time but also in some other virtual reality.

At least I know that I will be thoroughly fortified for the work, what with the eggs this morning and the party food in the afternoon.