Running on Empty

When i was in college I would pull all-nighters all the time. I worked 40-60 hours per week and took a full courseload. Even after college, I would get obsessed with different things and stay up all night working...One time it was a project. Another time it was when I was trying to buy a house. Other projects for my job have kept me up--I've survived. I guess I'm getting old--I barely survived today. My body is clearly telling me "Don't pull that shit anymore!"

Periodically, I would down something caffeinated to pep me up and keep me going. I had a crazy day scheduled--first of all, a meeting with a person I really like--it went well, as expected. I started crashing mid-morning, and I got into a kind of survival mode where I felt like I had a sort of tunnel vision--I could focus on one thing at a time, but wasn't multi-tasking as well as I normally force myself to do. I had planned the day out pretty well, so things went like clockwork. Or, rather as if I was sleepwalking through it--a passenger on a train.

I had to work with a co-worker for most of the day. A nice enough guy with the potential for being a little on the talkative, annoying side. My patience was worn, so a couple of times I "shush'ed" him while I was concentrating on a problem. My head was a dull ache. There was no retreat.

By midafternoon, the day crescendoed to a roar. I was busy coordinating the events of tomorrow, talking to Mike D. about a presentation, stopping for a brief lunch, and asking another co-worker to get some items ready for an important meeting in the morning.

At 3:00, I found myself in a surreal situation.

I can't give specifics--sorry.

I was sitting, completely alone, in a room, perfecting the performance of some pretty complicated equipment. I was totally covered--wearing a suit from head to toe, including foot covers and a poofy blue head thingy. Slowly, I turned my head to the left--next to me was a bank of incubators full of human embryos. It turned out there were hundreds of incubating embryos and eggs.

I thought of the movie Aliens--you know, the part where they go into the egg room and there are hundreds of those embryonic aliens. Part creeped-out, part humbled. How many souls were in those tubes? I got a clear picture of the molecules in the body passed down from generation to generation, without the confusion of ethics or religion or faith or emotions or trying to define what a family is in a social sense. Just in terms of lineage and heritance and the mechanics of embryonic development. It must be hard to people who work in such conditions daily to avoid a God complex.` Somehow, being in that room gave me a sense of power.

Those incubators held hope for those families--it was humbling, actually.

It's interesting what I was sensitive to when fatigued to the point of dropping my barriers...