Surviving on Six Hours Sleep

I have discovered the lack of a good-nights-sleep has detrimental effects on normal sleeping patterns, leads to motivation and discipline problems, frustration and loneliness.

Here’s why I need to change my habits:

Invariably I begin a new project on a Friday night, only to work right through until 7.00am. Then I sleep until midday. Sleeping consists of sneaking into the spare-bedroom, crawling under the covers and dreaming of code, muttering about the fixes for tomorrow night and dropping into a deep REM sleep where I dream about giant ZERO’s and ONE’s chasing me inside a giant orb that has no sides and no end!

When I awaken from my slumber, invariably I find SWMBO in the process of hanging my work shirts out to dry, rolling her eyes backward while saying “This should be your job…“. We clean house and give our four cats a few hours of TLC. When Saturday evening arrives, SWMBO and I sit in front of the television with our individual laptops.

The only loneliness I find is that my day-job work colleagues fail to grasp the fun adventures had on the internet, the weird sites I peruse, and the amazing amount of strange devices and paraphernalia available for purchase! One or two have accepted that it is my hobby, but mostly there is complete indifference.

Many of the people I work with have interesting life-styles that I would never allow myself to do:

1. Go to sports-games where metro-sexual men hug each other when they manage to kick the oblong ball between the middle of four white posts.
2. Get drunk to the point of brain damage at a nightclub where the music is so loud that general conversation is impossible. So much for being sociable!
3. Burning meat on a BBQ so much that all nutrients and taste is destroyed. In addition, eating bean-, sultana and rice -, and curried-pasta salad. Blurk! Give me pizza and cola any day!

Thus, I am happy to have my de-structured life-style, my sleepless nights, my susceptibility to sunlight unless filtered through curtains and constant despair at conversation with people who have not the slightest idea where “View Source” is in their browser.

Does that answer how I cope?

In summary, I cope by being married to the best woman in the world who understands that I may find a way to make money from “The WWW“. As long as I am there when she purchases yet another pair of good Colorado shoes, when she wants to clean house and available when she wants children – I get to spend my evenings online and my weekends asleep. Life is perfect.