Oh, Boy.

Had a bad moment--well, 'spell,' really, just now--I got tired--really, really tired in the middle of a lecture. That never happens. Lecturing is the thing that picks me up--in the same way that intense exercise gives you an out-of-the-body rush of endorphins, a really great lecture where all my synapses are firing and I'm coming up spontaneously with ideas that are so brilliant that I'm not even sure that I'm the one thinking of them--the ancients used to think of themselves as infused with the spirits of gods or demons when they really got onto an oratorical roll, and I know what they meant--it's a thing that leaves me feeling about 20 pounds lighter and in an infinitely better mood than when I went in.

But today, I stumbled mid-way through. Just felt the wind go out of my sails. Why, I'm not sure. I was teaching the second of two sections--giving, in short, the same lecture that I'd given the day before, so some of the spontaneity had gone out of it--and once again, I slept briefly and badly--and I'm still anxious and tense and thus muscularly clenched all the time--but really, that's all happened to me before, and I've still been a thoroughbred on the turf during class. Not today. Sigh. I suppose I just need to suck it up and exercise a lot this afternoon so that I can go to bed early and really sleep, hard, for an extra couple of hours, and catch up on the REM sleep I'm losing by these jolt-awakes. Maybe that'll help. Or, you know, I could just drink more and not worry about anything at all...