I lose a lot of sleep over stupid things sometimes, and I’m pretty sure it is due to an as-yet-unnamed medical condition, because I know that other people have the same problem. Some people can sleep until noon and wander around the house for the rest of the day in a too-much-sleep stupor, whereas I have only slept past 9:00 am twice in my life- Once after an obscenely late night of partying, and once in the hospital. No, it was not the following day.
I always wake up at 7:00 or so, occasionally fall back to sleep for an hour, but usually start thinking of all of the stuff I could be doing that is more productive than lying on my back, and get up. At night, however, I wake up during what I have known as the “hollow hours”, between 3 and 5 AM, when everything seems far away and my senses are deprived of all but my thoughts. It is these times that I start thinking. I’ll stay awake for as long as three hours with my mind on overdrive. I have learned not to look at my clock, because I don’t want to worry about how long I have been awake, but I do keep a sketchbook and pencil next to my bed in case of a moment of genius. Sometimes I write a great story, sometimes I design a new thingy that does the work of three of the old thingies, but more often than not, I’ll worry about some stupid, minor issue in my life and blow it all out of proportion. What follows is an exerpt of my brain at 4:03 in the morning. I broke my rule and looked at my clock, and all of this information passed through my head in the space of two minutes. After that, I was all hung up on the moving thing and stayed awake thinking about that until well after five. Not all of this will make sense, as I have not provided any background information, but that’s not the purpose. The purpose (as elsewhere in this diary) is to document my thoughts. You will see some of these thoughts explained in later entries, as I get lots of ideas for journal entries while flopping around in bed. Okay, here goes…
…can’t read the tire. How do they belt those things? It’s got to be done during the molding process. DUDE! I can totally remove a servo on my plane and still have elevator/aileron mixing! Saving weight and basically adding a channel. Must remember to write that down. I wonder if my Mom enjoyed mother’s day. That was a whole shit pot of flowers. Does the girl who sold them to me feel bad for asking me why I waited until the last minute to buy them? Probably wouldn’t if I hadn’t said “well, I haven’t seen my mom in fifteen years…” hehehe. That’s a journal entry. Jesus, that smells. What did I eat for dinn-oh, yeah. Thai food. Hmmm. Should have lit that one. I’d probably end up on fire, though, which would also make a good journal entry. I hope I can go flying tomorrow. This weather sucks. Pitot static system on airplanes seems awfully archaic after seeing how it works this weekend. Seems like it would be easier to do using today’s technology rather than that from 1943. Jim’s smart. If the transponder shows your altitude to air traffic control, but gets its information from the altimeter in the plane, you are basically screwed if your altimeter is not calibrated. Okay. Using GPS to find altitude would be much safer. Crap, if the pitot/static system fails, you’d be unhappy with the fact that you no longer know how far away the ground is. Especially if it happened at night, unless you had your GPS working. Wonder why they haven’t done that yet. Gotta ask Jim when I see him again. That Solaris airplane was sweet as hell. I wish I had a million dollars to buy it with. My back hurts. I bet it knows I’m moving next week and is just reminding me not to do anything stupid. Good back. There, there. FUCK! Was that a spider?!? I know something moved. That fart probably damn near killed him. God, I hate this. It was probably the sheets shifting, but since I can’t see it, it’s a huge scary scorpion with dripping fangs and malice in its heart. Like that gargantuan brown monstrosity I saw on Roy’s workbench yesterday. God that spider must have weighed 3 pounds. I was really creeped out by that. Mental note on another possible journal entry. I wonder if you could train a spider to fetch. Small things of course, but still a pretty cool trick-“bring me a toothpick!” I’ll have to e-mail that spider. I could ride him to work. Jeez, it’s only been a minute? How can that much stuff have possibly gone through my head in a minute? Was it really that much stuff? Could’ve sworn it had been at least ten minutes. Is this normal? How often do I question my sanity? Is that healthy? I do get a lot done, and think I have seen and done considerably more in my life than most people, but has it all been the right stuff? What was the best time of my life? Today, but I haven’t seen tomorrow yet. Print that on a bumper sticker and sell it to all of the annoyingly positive people in the world. I’ll make dozens of dollars. Is there actually a girl out there who will understand me? They all say they do, but if they did, they could appreciate it. I wonder if I’ll ever be happy enough with a woman to spend my life with her. I’m not too picky. I just know what I want. If she doesn’t exist, or the timing doesn’t work out, I’ll just enjoy my freedom. It would be nice to have someone once in a while, though. How often do I actually wish I had a girlfriend? Probably once a month for about fifteen minutes. Heh. Doesn’t exactly warrant a search now, does it? The right girl would probably make me miss having her around. We’ll see. For now, there are too many things going on to worry about things I can’t control. Moving next weekend is going to suck. I hate the hassle of it. What would be so wrong with just leaving my stuff and moving to a place full of other stuff? Pretty cool idea. I have the truck reserved, but packing is always such a pain. I know I have tons more stuff than I think. I wish I could just give it all away and start over. That’d be expensive. Logos, business cards, marketing literature, letterhead…what else do I need for the flight school design project? Damn, I’ve got to finish making those plans for the Cessna caravan for Dave. He’s gonna be pissed. I wonder if that ad made it to the magazine on Friday. I’m sure I would have heard about it. This is a huge workload. I hate being under this much stress. Did I get paid this week? Damn. Did I pay my phone bill? Man, what if I’m out of money? Then I’m done for. I won’t be able to move, my rent will be due again, Crap. This is getting out of hand. Go to my happy place…ahhh. There we go. Now I am in a land of smiling clouds and pretty girls who flutter their eyelashes and giggle when they look at me. I like this place. I should build a scale model of a beechcraft staggerwing. Maybe I should rebuild that motor that’s making the buzzing noise first. I bet it’s just a loose brush. Canvas. An orange chair in forced perspective, an open door leading to a yellow pasture. Someone walking through the room, but all you can see is their leg. A blue shoe. I need to paint something soon. Wish everything would settle down. My foot is asleep, and I hope my body follows suit.
I was talking to a friend of mine, though I can’t remember who it was at the moment, and she asked if I ever wrote “stream of consciousness”. I said I hadn’t, but I draw that way all the time. I’ve always considered my stream of consciousness to be a raging torrent when it gets going, and my brainstorms come complete with lightning and high winds. This is not to say that there is any useful information in the preceding paragraph or that I have ever come up with a revolutionary idea, but the process is much more fun than the product anyway.
That was a glimpse into my head. Please realize that this kind of mental noise never stops for me unless I am completely absorbed in a task, and take that into account when you ask me “How do you spell ‘Israeli’?” and I answer “Hell yeah! All I need is a small threaded rod and a better understanding of quantum physics!” And scamper off to the bathroom.
