Do you ever have one of those nights where you go to sleep thinking about a problem from work/school, and then continue to think about the problem while you're sleeping? In sleepland, you find that things suddenly make perfect sense; you're starting to see this problem from an angle you never considered. You get up to hit the potty in the middle of the night and you think, "Man, we are making some PROGRESS tonight! I should be getting paid for this." But you don't stand around thinking for too long, because that takes away from your valuable sleepy problem-solving time.
When you get up the next morning, you're a little tired because it felt like you were working all night. But hey, you at least got some productivity out of it. Then you begin to think about the brilliant ideas you concocted while you were sleeping. Very quickly, you realize that they make absolutely no sense. I had one of these last night and I got really excited because I realized that I could solve everything by indentation. "If we indent everything, it'll just work!" By the time I woke up, I had no idea what I was originally trying to figure out. What exactly was I going to indent now? There is no problem in my or anyone else's life that can be solved through savvy indenting. (Maybe I was dreaming about being a renegade copy editor again, I don't know.) Around 4 AM last night though, I was practically ecstatic about the idea. A troupe of lusty maidens with stock tips and Playstation 3 prototypes could've barged into the dream and I would've thrown them out with a vengeance so I could get back to the indentation revolution.
It is for this reason that I don't keep a phone by my bed. If I did, half of Austin would start getting voicemails from a groggy voice saying things like, "Must fill spare bedroom with... otters" or "Put life savings into inventing edible mittens". Now if you receive a voicemail like that in the middle of the day, I expect you to act on it; the only cut off is 11 PM to 8 AM.
Posted by Cody at March 1, 2006 6:45 PM