I am officially sick of coffee.

I bought a pound of my favorite this week – Peet’s Major Dickason’s Blend, the formula so stout mere mortals spew it – and it hasn’t fazed me. I had a Starbuck’s Cafe Americana this afternoon and was drowsy an hour later. I’m so drowsy now it took me three attempts to spell drowsy.

And the better news: The weekend, a time when normally I can almost sort of get caught up on sleep and dial the caffeine levels down to something shy of addiction,will be an hour short.

The best part, though: This is the year that Big Guy has caught on to daylight savings time and he’s protesting already. “You mean I’ll be going to sleep when the sun’s still out. No fair!”

The sleep-deprivation hole I’ve been digging myself into just got so deep that scaling Everest would be easier than climbing out of it.

Ay, but I’m not the only one. According to the most recent Sleep in America Poll, only 28 percent of us get the requisite eight hours a night. The average pillow time has fallen to 6.7 hours per weeknight, CNN says. Why don’t they just name it the No Sleep in America Poll and get it over with?

I’m not the only one with a pathetic attitude at times as a result. I spent a chunk of my drowsy afternoon wrangling with a grumpy bureaucrat whose passive aggressive snark had me ready to kick the cat. Good thing I don’t have  a cat. I bet the bureaucrat snoozed for  six hours, max, last night.

Used to be, sleeplessness was a badge of honor, and I don’t mean just during the college “party Thursday and stagger into class  Friday days.” I’m talking about the “work harder to get ahead” syndrome. These days we should call it the “work harder to keep from being left behind” syndrome.

It’s insane, and we all know it. We’re simply not as effective or productive at the end of a 19-hour day as we are if we’d called it quits after a mere 16. Yet we press on, at times out of sheer panic.

Not this time. Tonight, in honor of the sleep study, in recognition of Sunday’s lost hour and because I really want to love Major Dickason again, I quit.

Good night.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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