On the Decision Not to Sleep

So here we are, exactly 24 hours after I last woke up and still going strong. As we learned in my previous post, I have decided to preemptively subvert my oncoming jet lag by staying up from 1pm on day 1 until about 8pm on day 2. Unconventional, yes. But, effective? We shall see. 

I will say that I was pretty shaky there in the wee hours of the morn. I spent my entire night watching movies, mostly of the Studio Ghibli variety (6 movies to be exact), but by dawn it all felt so surreal. I watched a few movies in my living room until about 4am, but then migrated to my bedroom so as not to alarm my parents. I sat in the dim glow of my fairy lights and watched the adventures of Princess Nausicaä and Ponyo as though through a filmy haze. 

By dawn, I was so zonked that the entire night felt rather surreal. After my parents left for work, I wandered down to the kitchen where I sat with the lights off in the gray 8am light where I realized that I still had 12 hours of wakefulness ahead of me. There was no way I could go on like this. So I decided to make some coffee (6 cups worth), which took me 3 attempts to actually brew. The first time, I forgot to put the actual coffee in, the second time, the filter folded over and the coffee grounds bled into the pot, but the third time was a charm. I’ve staggered my coffee consumption for maximum wakefulness (I still have things to do today), and I am 4 cups of coffee deep. 

Post-coffee-and-shower Austen is just as alert as I normally would be (which I find truly astonishing), and just generally much less dazed and spacey. But we’ll see how I fare during the next 7 or so hours.