By now, most of you have figured out that I tend to work through the night. And those of you who do know that, know I also fight an often losing battle with insomnia. This is one of those times. Since about one o’clock Monday afternoon, I’ve had somewhere between four and four and a half hours sleep. In a little over forty hours.
I should have passed out from exhaustion well before midnight, but I did not. I managed to read a book, but made the mistake of reading a good book, so that didn’t work out quite like I planned.
Then I thought about reclaiming the top of my desk because I swear it was there at some point. It probably is, beneath the many bottles of supplements I take, and piles of notebooks and stacks of index cards with notes and lists. But after pondering it for about seventeen seconds, I decided that was a job best tackled after no fewer than six hours sleep.
And then I thought, hmm. Sometimes games make me tired enough that I can fall into dreamland in a hurry. Except… I made the mistake of playing the daily Trivial Pursuit game first. Which woke me up a little more. Which wasn’t why I played.
So then I thought … well, as long as I’m here (www.pogo.com), I could play a little Scrabble, because sometimes that works too.
Only it didn’t. So far, I’ve beaten the computer opponent about a dozen times tonight.
And the part of my brain that is honest with myself when I’m in a seriously sleep-deprived state knows I was lying to myself when I decided it might make me tired enough to sleep. It knows that eventually it will work, but only because I finally reach whatever point it is where my brain finally lets me. But until that happens, I’ll feed my addiction.
Yes, folks, I’m addicted to Scrabble.
Don’t believe me? These are my stats for the past four years or so…
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Yup. I’ve won 1,825 games. And of the 214 losses, about half are because I used to play real humans. Humans who would get annoyed when I’d beat them – which I almost always did. And so, because I don’t like making others feel bad, I started losing on purpose.
But then one day I realized that wasn’t any fun, so I started playing the computer. And I beat it! More often than not.
I was beating a computer opponent!
And that’s a lot of fun. But it’s also, as I mentioned above, very addictive. Not only that, I work with words for a living. Words are created from letters – and I do a fairly decent job of finding them in my Scrabble tiles. And the more I find, the more I want to find … so I can beat the computer again.
Even now, as I’m wondering what sort of pillow my keyboard would make, I’m thinking … maybe just one more game. But when that’s finished, I’ll think, okay, just one more game. And five games later…
Seriously though. Just one more game and I’m going to bed. Really. I will.
Maybe…
You need more cats.
About seven more so I can have an even dozen? 😀
OK, so it’s not a lack of felines…
LOL…nope. 😀