What Keeps Me Up At Night

I rarely get enough sleep.  It’s usually my own fault:  go to bed early or watch the new “Project Runway”?  Tim Gunn wins every time.

But I often wake in the middle of the night, thoughts racing.  They’re never the biggies – saving for retirement or my dad’s health.  They’re always little.  As in microscopic.  We’re out of raisins.  I should brush the dog.  That library book is due in three days.

Clearly I’m sweating the small stuff.  But try as I might, I can’t shake those thoughts at 4:00 a.m., which becomes 4:30 a.m., which becomes 5:00 a.m.  I keep a legal pad at my bedside, so that I can (theoretically) unload my brain and get back to sleep.  It sometimes works.  But in the morning I find cryptic notes like “cAr Tusday.”  Your guess is as good as mine.

I should be happy my subconscious jolts me awake to wrestle with minutia.  It’s much better than existential dread.  But am I avoiding the heavy stuff?  Can I only bear to think about the raisins?

What keeps you up at night?