(You're farther down the page, Kat...) I stayed up late reading comic books last night, and ended up (stupidly) only getting about two hours of sleep. I should feel a lot more tired than I do, and that worries me. I don't like it when I miss sleep and can't feel it. That means the damage is done in areas I can't understand. Usually, it's just delerium and depression that set in, creeping up so you can't tell they're there until you catch yourself saying or doing very odd and/or inappropriate things, or having momentary visions in the mind's eye of horrible, despairing imagery. Nothing too unfamiliar, although I'll grant you the latter is uncommon under the light of day. I have noticed, the past few weeks, that I tend to get very maudlin and depressing on sunday evenings, probably in part from knowing I have to go back to work the next day. Fortunately, I have found that if I take enough of my antidepressant OTC supplements and make up that sleep as soon as possible, I do okay. Mind you, you have to take them responsibly.
The only sign of sleep deprivation I'm worried about is microsleeps. When you just suddenly have these little blackouts that last no time at all. (Can you tell I'm an old hand at sleep deprivation? Yep, during the Great Crash of '95-96, I stayed up for approximately two and a half weeks, averaging about an hour or two of sleep every three days or so. For those of you not familiar with my rather exclusively autobiographical nomenclature here, this was the year I completely snapped from clinical depression and had to be put on prescription antidepressants. Too much, it just all got to me at once. Spent two weeks awake, my train of thought cyclic and neverending, like the world-snake of Norse Mythology swallowing its own tail, and finally induced an anxiety attack that had lasting effects for about two or three years. Stupid adolescent bullshit and angst don't mix with actual depression well.)
Anyway, over the course of typing this, I have gotten incredibly tired, which means that it's merely the old foggy-brain routine mixed with bad motor control and mild delerium. That's good. I got maudlin enough last night reading the comic books. Not ordinary comic books, mind you, but The Watchmen, which is widely regarded as one of the only things to truly bring comic books into the realm of literature and/or art. A few have followed, Neil Gaiman's Sandman for one, but overall the genre gets no respect. It's the die-hard fans, I think...they tend to be a bit stereotypical. (Don't get me wrong, I like comic books, but there's a line, people...a line you just don't cross...) Anyway, for anyone who hasn't read it, I heartily recommend it, even if you don't like comic books. It's fantastic, although it is definitely grim, in more ways than one.