Every night I try to get seven hours of slumber, but it never seems to happen. Arianna Huffington says I should bag at least eight hours, but a little man in my head has always resisted that. At best I manage five and a half to six hours plus 30 to 45 minutes of pre-sleep tweeting plus an hour of lying around and checking tweets the next morning. I’ll sometimes try and grab a nap between 4:30 and 6 pm, but that doesn’t seem to help much. The bottom line is that with sleep constantly tugging at my sleeve it’s easy to slip under at a moment’s notice.
Yesterday afternoon I pulled into a CVS parking garage at the northeast corner of La Cienega and Santa Monica Blvd. In a car, I mean. I eased into a spot and sat there for a bit as I finished listening to a song. I closed my eyes and 20 minutes later I woke up, still in the sitting position, iTunes music still playing, the engine still running. “Holy shit,” I said to myself. The next time I feel a fatigue thing approaching as I’m driving, I’ll just pull over and park and catch 40 winks.