A day at the office...

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself, any direction you choose.”

- Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

BANG…BLING…BLANG…@#$!...CRASH – the loud and unrelenting sound broke the silent darkness of the room.

“Wait!” – “What!” – “Where I am I?” – “What time is it?” – “Am I dreaming?!”

The alarm had just gone off and as happens when one is in deep sleep, the awakening brings a completely alien world.  The disorientation of being suddenly awakened can be profoundly disturbing; sometimes taking hours to feel a sense of normalcy of equilibrium.

This is typically followed by mild grumbling, questioning the sanity of using these devices in the first place. It is like waking up with cognitive bad breath accented by a dose of stale mental garlic and onions!!

Why do this?

We almost never use alarms to wake us. The decades of routine have set internal rhythms simply waking us at the appointed time.  In the strangest of ways, this phenomenon is programmable. I can, for example, tell myself to wake at a certain time, and with the punctuality of this annoying electronic device, I am able to do so.  

That would, mean getting up earlier. The ‘let’s sleep in’ algorithm has yet to be sorted out.

The crazy thing about setting an alarm, is that one gives their will over to these devices out of the concern that this one time, the ‘internal clock’ will fail leading to over sleeping, and in this case, a missed flight. The reason it is crazy, is the years of experience suggest a consistent level of control over waking up – Ah the frailty of the human spirit!!

This Friday morning the office was an American Airlines three and a half hour flight to Chicago; a respite in a taxi to the hotel, a moderately comfortable room with a desk, followed by a faculty dinner.  The day that had begun before four in the morning, ended in the late evening hours, slipping between the sheets and boarding a single passenger vessel for a night’s journey on what some mythic cultures call, the “…great river of the sky…”

The coming morning needed none of the electronic trappings that had so challenged my sense of reality the day before…nope, no flights to catch…nothing more than a pre-conference breakfast, so late in relation to my normal biorhythms I could have overridden my internal ‘wake up clock’ by a large margin…still making the conference with time to spare! That, of course, could have happened if I knew how to sleep in!

Work done…the commute home…

The meeting went well, as did my “…15 minutes of [presentation] fame…” and before you knew it, the workday was done.  At 4PM (16:00) the taxi was waiting to whisk me back to the mighty airship that would carry me home where tucking into my own bed had now taken a place in the forefront of my mind.

Optimism - expecting a different outcome…

Unfortunately, I had forgotten I was flying home from Chicago O’Hare airport…Flying in and out of here, sometimes is like have an injury that is bad enough to make you say to yourself, “I will never do that silly thing again.”

Sadly, the brain seems to forget pain and discomfort, and often we repeat things that might hurts us, because we think the results will be different.

Over the years, coming to and from the ‘Windy City,’ or flying through it on the way to some other destination, has proven to be challenging and if not painful, certainly tiring. More uncomfortable seats than I like to remember, have supported my weary bones while waiting for a delayed flight.

This night turned out to be no different!

I always look forward to longer flights because I usually can get a fair amount of work done…you know, quiet time…no phone calls or internet. At night, after a long day, however, the crushing reality of fatigue collides with good intention and more often than not, as on this flight, fatigue does most of the winning – the long flight home a restless, moderately uncomfortable experience.

In the end, after a number of delays, that silver winged bird brought me to a safe landing sometime near the 11:30 (23:30) hour.  The 35-minute drive home was only made tolerable by the cheery smile that awaited me as Molly picked me up.

It was well after midnight when I collapsed into bed (no slipping gently between the sheets here!) and fell into the abyss of exhaustion.

The morning came near the five o’clock hour. I thought, as I often do, Maybe I’ll go back to sleep for a few more restful minutes.   I lay there, for the next 30 or so, unsuccessfully negotiating a little more sleep.

This morning, like many ‘short nights’ in the past brought a new day with yet unknown adventures. 

The good news…even though the night was brief…my entry into this conscious revolution of the planet was much less alarming!

- ted