The Political Physicist

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve written one of these. It’s not that I haven’t had things to write about: the stress of school, post office privatization, derailments and scandal at CN, my ambivalence towards Remembrance Day, my dismay at discovering that some of the political figures I liked (emphasis on the past tense) were rather chummy with certain dictators, an exposition on why I hold the political views I do when it seems more and more as though I don’t actually like anyone else who shares them… But, alas, I’ve been busy with assignments, classes, labs, making sure that I am fed, and preventing my apartment from becoming a complete shambles. After all that, all I really want to do is turn my brain off for awhile—not write a few thousand words of polemic.

Nonetheless, I’m writing something now, at last. Nothing from the topics listed above. The reasons are, respectively: no one else is interested in me grumbling, I’ll write about that if and when the government tries it here, it turns out that the story didn’t have as interesting ramifications as I expected, it will come around again next year, I can’t be bothered to write something requiring that many brain cells at the moment, and I’m probably being too hard on my comrades. The only reason that I’m writing right now, really, is because I can’t sleep. It’s becoming something of a problem for me.

For a number of years now (it first started when I was still in elementary school, I think) I’ve had some problems getting to sleep at night. But occasionally I go through spells when it is especially bad. This time it started three weeks ago, during the week when I had four midterms. Presumably it was the stress that started it. But it’s more or less continued since then. So now I find myself in this situation: I lie awake at night, totally incapable of getting to sleep. Then, in the morning, I sleep through my alarm(s), wake up at 10 o’clock (which presumably doesn’t make it any easier to get to sleep at a reasonable hour the next night), have to rush to class and skip the gym (and possibly breakfast). Then, just to add insult to injury, there’s a good chance that I’ll find myself nearly falling asleep during class and I’ll definitely be falling asleep when I try to do assigned readings. All in all, my situation feels a lot like this:

(John Finnemore, the guy who wrote that little song, is an incredibly funny guy whose radio sitcom Cabin Pressure I would most definitely recommend.)

So, I sit up late at night, writing inanely about my inability to sleep. Will this be of any interest to you, dear reader? God knows. Probably not, actually, but insomnia or not I’m not feeling quite alert or clever enough at this time in the evening to write about anything more intellectual. In any case, good night.