Saturday, December 11, 2010

Is this insomnia?

Well, so much for bedtime.

I don't know what's happened to me lately, but for the past couple of weeks I have been completely unable to sleep before 2 am. I find myself in bed watching stuff on Hulu -- like old Mary Tyler Moore episodes, and most recently this cancelled ABC Family show based on the movie "10 Things I Hate About You", which wasn't quite "My So-Called Life" but actually pretty good. I was a lot like Kat in high school...and my sister was a lot like Bianca. In some ways, it's kind of scary how close to home it can hit...for example, in one episode an elderly woman chastises Kat and tells her, "I know a lot of girls like you who wound up being old cat ladies", a fate I am beginning to wholeheartedly embrace. (Except that tonight the cat managed to drag my sort of heavy wool coat off the chair and onto her wet cat food, which she likes to cover up despite my regular reassurances that I have no interest in eating it.)

But back to the not sleeping thing. It's not stress. I'm not depressed. It might be caffeine but I don't think so. The last time this happened I had a week of really bad dreams about an ex-boyfriend of mine who was being exceedingly mean, and it got to the point where I didn't want to sleep because I didn't want to dream about him being mean anymore. But there are no bad dreams this time. Mostly it feels like...procrastination. Possibly my worst habit; in fact, sometimes I worry I will procrastinate my entire life away, with a college friend's words echoing in my ears: "I could have wasted my time in much better ways". And it's weird because I have a list a mile long of things I want to do (or need to do...), but I cannot get any of it done to save my life. It's not just finishing knitting projects or cleaning out the fridge, either; it's stuff that is really important to me, like my writing projects. I'm avoiding them big-time. I don't know why.

The other thing is, my hair has been giving me fits. It's too long now, to the point where about all I can do is put it in a ponytail. I fantasize about taking my pinking scissors to my ponytail, just to see what would happen. While I'm not a big drinker anyway, I am currently avoiding all alcohol just so that I don't act on the scissor impulse. It's a pretty strong compulsion, actually; even just writing about it is making me think about those scissors, which I happen to know are on the dining room table. The problem is that every time I cut my hair short I hate it and instantaneously regret it. But...wow. Just...chop. So tempting...

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