12/11/07 Energy

I was thinking last night about energy cycles, as I lay in bed after struggling through an evening barely able to keep my eyes open. Now I was, alert, tense and nowhere near sleep. I was well past the tipping point after which my energy reserves were tapped, the floodgates opened, and then I couldn't turn it off. Not unlike overtired hyperactive children.

I kept thinking about a passage in a book I'd read long ago...a meta-passage, really, since in the book, the protagonist wrote a short essay which unexpectedly won her an award in school. That essay was about ambition, and it included the insightful line, "Ambition is a good servant but a poor master." Who wrote that? It churned in my head as I thought how the same applies to energy. My trademark energy. It served me well when I needed to dig deep to make the evening go, but was now mastering me.

My mind was spinning so out of control I felt I had no choice but to take the tiniest sliver of an Ambien that I could cut. It doesn't help that I'm reading The Kite Runner, a book I'd heard about some time ago, and now has been made into a movie. It is indeed an excellent book, and there's a heartbreaking part in which the main character and his wife are struggling with infertility. Especially for Afghanis, for whom family and blood are so important, this was deeply felt for them. I read that part again while waiting for sleep to finally overtake me.

The last thought I had was I'm so, so, so glad I have children.

12/11/07