the things we do

Today I woke up late, showered and dressed and listened to another segment of the 'Ghost of Bobby Dunbar' episode of This American Life, which is the most compelling thing I've seen, heard or watched in months. For some reason, I never listened to the entire thing the first time it aired. I steamed some broccoli and seared some fake meat for my lunch while I popped in and out of the bedroom, sipping on my morning smoothie (strawberries and pumpkin seeds and goat's milk yogurt in this one) and pausing and restarting the podcast so as not to miss a savory detail. What a thing to confront an event that is equal parts family history, national incident and identity crisis! My family has little recorded history, so to me, the concept of tethering myself to anything that happened before my birth--even if it were the origin of my family name--would be a bit more of an academic exercise than anything. But for the people in the story, history doesn't just live in the past. That's what's so compelling about them, I guess.

I spent the day being mostly ineffectual at work, alternating between drafts of an earmark request for congressional appropriations and desperate email checks in search of distractions from said request. I did enjoy my lunch, though. In fact, I enjoyed so much food during the workday that during my subway ride home, I realized that I was full. At 6 pm. I think I have taken to eating as a distraction, too. Must I turn every pleasure into a drug?

Well, apparently I must not, because I don't. Feeling low when I got home, I thought I would try having a drink to cut the tension, but all my two glasses of red wine did were put me to sleep. So, alcohol: an middlingly sastisfactory indulgence. Sleep, however is the one drug about which I have no qualms or doubts, and now I am wide awake at 1 am, feeling more positive and more capable than I did at 8 pm. If not for my utter adoration of sunlight, I might guess that my natural clock were shifting toward nocturnalism, but I know it's more just having had the gift of sleep and being able to feel like I can put the day, and my concerns, safely in the past, before sleep, where they have no way of accessing me in the present.