A radio advertisement today told me that sleep problems are running rampant throughout the world, and I wondered why they decided to air that advertisement at noon instead of when people are actually awake and trying to get to sleep.

Spread as thin as butter and pushing on many fronts, pondering sleep is something that is a poor substitute for sleep itself. I could easily swallow a pill, but I know that will take a full 8 hours and I don't have that sort of time these days. With the weather as one factor and people who are less than communicative on all fronts, the monotony of being alert wears thin. Of course, people don't know that and if you tell them, they either take it personally or rationalize it as an excuse to not communicate with you. Funny how that works.

But then they're not up at late hours staring at the ceiling and wondering what the next day will bring - if it will bring anything of use or whether it will be yet another day of waiting on people to communicate. The excuses fly around the piles of dung, buzzing a litany of monotony that would put someone to sleep if they could.

And sleep. The less sleep one has, the more it becomes necessary. A good rest. But the conditions for that do not exist, and that does not seem to be in the cards in the near future.

I'd like to sleep now. I would have liked to sleep earlier. A decade or two ago I often said, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." The childlike comment does hold a sincerity, though in a rather peculiar way decades later.

But the next day will float by. And the next. And the next. And the next. And so it will go until it stops.

Sleep. A pleasant thought, but not practical for someone forging ahead at the pace of the people around him.