My sweet jellybean,

I have a lot of bad habits. You know that better than anyone. In addition to my caffeine and nicotine addictions, it’s no secret that I have very unhealthy sleeping patterns.

I have made myself nearly entirely nocturnal. I’m never more awake, never more lucid than I am at 3 a.m. At 3 p.m., however, I’m almost always a walking zombie, stumbling through my life.

I love the peacefulness of 4 a.m.

Perhaps rather unfortunately Murphy copies my sleeping patterns. It doesn’t seem to have any ill effects on her. But it’s probably not so good for her, either. Sometimes, at 2 a.m., when I’m walking Murphy I stumble into late night hooligans and they look at me meanly as if it were cruel of me to walk my dog that late. This falls firmly into the category of none of their frickin’ business, if you ask me.

I said that I wanted to record patterns here. This is the first in my Time Series. For a week, I’ll snap a picture of my bedside clock when I first get up.

It’s a Saturday and there’s no good reason for getting up at 9:11 a.m. Except, for some reason, I have a nearly dehabilitating headache which is quite uncommon for me, or at least it would be except I have had this headache for about three days now.

This is probably what got me up at 9:11. I needed water and some Advil. And it was impossible going back to bed because it hurt so much.

A trooper always, I’m writing, smoking, and drinking coffee through the pain. I once knew a fellow who knew a fellow who had an uncommonly bad headache. He lived and worked through the pain for a day or two and then went to a doctor. He had had an aneurism or water on the brain or something and was dead a few hours after that. He was in his early 20s. If that’s the case with me, I’d rather not know, and I’d rather not spend the better part of my life in emergency.

Would people take up smoking if they had the foreknowledge that it wouldn’t kill them? Better: would people give up smoking if they had the foreknowledge that it would kill them?

That’s enough for now. My coffee is empty.

SS