Sleep When I’m Dead

It was pouring rain. I was wearing the same sportcoat, dress shirt, shoes and socks I’d been in since Saturday. My laptop weighed a hundred pounds. My guitar case felt like it had a dead body inside. And my legs were finally aching from Saturday’s half marathon. I was cold, wet, and tired as I neared the end of my 20-hour day. But as I stumbled down 56th Street, rain cascading from the brim of my baseball cap into my eyes, there was nothing left to do but smile.

It was the end of a long, long day. Somehow these ambitious plans of mine — ‘I know! I’ll run the half marathon, catch the train to Boston, play a show, then take the train straight into work!’ — seem like a good idea at the moment of inception. ‘I know! I’ll work a long week launching one of my most challenging projects ever, play a show in Brooklyn Thursday night, hop the train to Philly on Friday, play a show, then run the Broad Street 10 miler!’

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining. I can sleep when I’m dead. I wouldn’t change a thing. I like to do a lot, as much as possible, to pack my days full of activity. Somehow I feel like I’m making up for lost time. Which is odd because I’ve been hell-bent on being productive as long as I can remember (even when I was a stoner). So it’s kinda’ curious to wonder what drives it, what drives me.

At least that’s what I was thinkin’ as I turned down 45th Street this morning, Starbucks in hand, towards another day at the MTV, another day packed with meetings, another day squeezing in a five minute lunch, another day with multiple layers of after-school (ha ha) activity. The sun was breaking through the wind-blown leaves. A woman asked me for a dollar. The little park I love so much was open, but empty. I tugged at the cuffs of my bright, new spring shirt, and stepped out of the shadows, smiling again.