The Monster

There's a monster under my bed.  It's the source of my desire to read just one more article. To scroll through social media feeds just one more time. To keep my eyes open and prolong sleep as long as I can so I can avoid feeling its presence in the darkness. 

The monster is tomorrow. Not the whole of tomorrow. Not the specific of tomorrow. Not an event or a task or a goal looming in the vague haze of tomorrow.

The monster is the very first part of tomorrow. The moments before I open my eyes. When my brain snaps awake but my body is asleep and the bricks of the foundation of my day are laid.

These precious hours are typically my favorite of the day. In the hours between 4 and 7 a.m. whether fully sleeping or fully awake I think up my most creative solutions to the barrage of problems I've stored up for the solving. I am so fond of these hours, in fact, that I call them "The Andrea Hours."  My hours to use when the house is quiet, but my mind is vibrant, and I can accomplish anything.

And now these hours are a monster.

It started my first day home during this coronabreak.  We'd assembled work packets and distributed them to families the day before, effectively separating me from the need to prep or grade work for at least two weeks. I awoke with a start and reached for my problems. Knowing I didn't get to spend the day with my students, I couldn't find one to whittle away at. No little behavioral burble threatening to erupt. No concept to turn over in my mind until I could phrase it just right. No tricky scheme for getting my kids from point A to point C with activities outnumbering drivers. No... well. Just nothing.

So my brain invented a problem. I could feel it happen. I could sense its phoniness. And yet, there I was. Off chasing this strand of imagination to the edges of my mind and back again.  And it happened again the next morning. A completely fictional problem to solve. An argument I truly didn't plan to have being hashed out by the boardroom in my mind.

It is ridiculous. And I can't seem to control it. It is exhausting, lying there, knowing the world has 99 problems and that not one of them is mine to solve. Not even during the Andrea hours.

And so I stay up later than I have a need for. I fall asleep. And when the hum of my mental engine quickens in the morning, I whisper, "Go back to sleep. You're not needed."