The days can go on with reg­u­lar­i­ty over and over, one day indis­tin­guish­able from the next.

—Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver

Every day I think that I’ll catch up on sleep at night, but I nev­er seem to get the chance. I have time here and there to write, but things don’t come out prop­er­ly when I’m tired. Even on the week­ends, when I expect to be able to sleep in, I’m always off some­where, doing some­thing. It’s such a change from how I was liv­ing last year; no school, no job, no girl­friend, with all my friends still attend­ing uni­ver­si­ty. I lost all sense of time.

I’m busier than ever at work, and it’s a great feel­ing to know that I’m respon­si­ble for so much…for meet­ing dead­lines, for com­plet­ing projects, for com­ing up with solu­tions to peo­ples’ prob­lems. It’s a lot of stress, but it’s a great chal­lenge. Being forced to work with a lack of sleep has made me more accus­tomed to think­ing while fatigued, some­thing that I nev­er thought was pos­si­ble. I used to need a prop­er eight hours a day to think, oth­er­wise I could only oper­ate at a basic lev­el. Only one day in the last month have I felt rest­ed. The fact that I’m still going and get­ting things done is a big deal to me. And now it feels like I’m final­ly work­ing towards some­thing, in my rela­tion­ships, in my career, even in my equi­ty and assets.

I remem­ber Pat telling me to enjoy my unem­ploy­ment, and I did exact­ly that. I appre­ci­at­ed every minute of it, and now I appre­ci­ate every moment that I have some­thing to do. I appre­ci­at­ed the free­dom of being sin­gle, and now I appre­ci­ate the com­fort of being with some­one.