I Resolve to Sleep My Way Through 2022

I keep hoping that I might wake up and have everything be better.

I'll discover it was all a dream.

A bad dream.

There comes a moment when your body steps in and wrests control of the wheel.

“Let me have that for a moment,” it says. “You’re making bad choices.” The next thing you know, you collapse into unconsciousness.

We’ve all had moments when we just can’t keep up anymore. Perhaps it was at a terrible job. Perhaps it was in a terrible relationship. It’s amazing how quickly the motivation to “make it work” can evaporate into nothingness.

“I’m not going to wash one more dish,” you say, throwing down the rag.

Then you take a step back and you start to think, “What if I never washed another dish again for the rest of my life? What would happen? Would it even matter?”

Then you take another step back, and it pleases you how the sink is getting farther away. So you take another step and another, and another, and pretty soon you’re running. You run all the way to the airport, and you buy a ticket, then you’re on a plane. The plane is serving wine. WINE! What joy! Then you land and you rent a room and you sleep.

Blessed, fitful, wonderful, uninterrupted SLEEP!

A million miles away from everyone and everything.

And there are dreams!

Your mind is free. You see no visions of dirty dishes. You’ve left those behind forever.

I’ve done this before. It is possible to sleep away a year, or two, or five.

I slept away ten.

I woke up in Lima, Peru a decade after I graduated from college. Imagine my surprise to find myself fluent in Spanish!

I chuckled to think that somewhere there was a doorstep overflowing with angry notices about how I'd defaulted on my student loans.

Angry, angry notices.

Yes, you can learn Spanish when you’re asleep.

Or drunk...

In my case, I learned it when I was drunk.

Those of you who spent thousands of dollars on a degree in Spanish probably feel pretty silly right now.

Everybody needs to have one moment in life when they push themselves away from the negotiating table and just start spinning in circles in the office chair.

“What are you doing sir?”

“Weeeeeeeee!”

“Do you want the job or not?”

“Weeeeeeeee!”

“Security!”

“Weeeeeeeee!”

You can make a few scenes like this in your life. You should make a few scenes like this. I’ll let you in on a little secret.

Come closer.

Closer...

You’ll never talk to those people again. Be silly! It doesn’t matter.

There are a lot of jobs in the world.

There are a lot of offices.

In fact, you can make a ridiculous scene at offices in random cities every day for a year and never run into the same people twice.

If you did run into the same people, I guarantee you that they’ll treat you like a LEGEND!

“You’re that guy who came in for an interview and just spun around in circles.”

“Yes I am.”

“You totally wasted the boss’s time!”

“Yes I did.”

“You’re awesome, let me buy you a beer.”

And if they don’t like you, just say, “Weeeeeeee!”

Sometimes, the best thing you can do is sleep.

Put $100 in Bitcoin and go to sleep. Maybe when you wake up in a year, or five years, or ten years, it will be worth a million dollars.

Who knows?

Your body doesn’t let you do stupid things. Involuntary response steps in and takes over. Go on auto pilot. Let it take over for a year.

When you dive at the floor your arms automatically come up to protect your face. You can't stop them. You can't will them to do nothing. I've tried.

Don’t try so hard.

Nobody’s supposed to live up to all those expectations.

The system is designed so that you fail.

You're always chasing your tail.

It makes you feel miserable and broken down so you’ll shut up and do the dishes.

You don’t even think to ask who got those dishes dirty in the first place?

Where are they?

Why don’t they get in here and clean them up?

When you’re a kid, you chase grades because that’s what you’re supposed to do. What is an A? An A is three lines on a piece of paper. It’s nothing. It’s meaningless!

When you’re older, you chase money because that’s what you’re supposed to do. What is money? It’s ink on a piece of paper. It’s nothing. It’s meaningless!

Henry David Thoreau said, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.”

Well, how do you know what your dreams are until you’ve slept?

So rest.

Rest and dream.

You’ll find that your dreams are more real than the inconsequential artificialities that torment you.

You've known this since grade school.

You used to sing it at recess, but you've forgotten.

Life, after all, is but a dream...