Apologies for the delay these past few days. This post was NOT written on 06/20/2019, but rather a few days later and backdated. Deal with it!
I spent the last 3 nights in the hospital, though not for myself (score!). I stayed in the hospital to keep a very dear friend (actually, it was my mother, but that sounds lamer than if it were a friend) company during his/her hip-replacement recovery. Fortunately, MY hip was (and still is) in mint condition, so I was able to frolic around the hospital at my leisure, while my dear friend was forced to remain in bed (he/she has what the medical field refers to as a “sh*t hip”).
Unfortunately, though I did a little bit, I wasn’t able to frolic around the hospital as much as I would have liked. You see, when you stay overnight in the hospital as a guest, you do NOT get a bed. No. You get a chair. The chair may recline a bit, but it’s still a chair, so there you go.
2 paragraphs up, I wrote, “I spent the last 3 nights in the hospital,” a clause that I worded VERY PARTICULARLY. I spent the last 3 nights in the hospital, but I didn’t sleep worth a wink.
I’m a good friend (son) though, so I soldiered through it. I figured, if I had to choose between having my hip removed and replaced with a ball of titanium or not sleeping for 85 hours, I’d choose the former (though it would be a difficult decision, because the “no-sleep” thing was pretty rough).
Every morning at 7:45 AM, I’d leave the hospital to go to work, return to the hospital, not sleep, and repeat the process the next day/night. Every waking moment (which was EVERY moment) was work. I didn’t sit to REST for even a MINUTE. It was probably illegal for me to even be operating a car at my level of sleep deprivation. I had essentially worked 2 forty-hour work weeks without taking so much as a power nap.
I started seeing stars whenever I was standing.
I started to see every object as if it held a numeric value, which my mind would arrive at by assigning each letter of the alphabet a corresponding number, which I would subliminally solve by taking the sum of the letters in the name for every object.
CHAIR = C+H+A+I+R = 3+8+1+9+18= 39. CHAIR = 39.
DOG = D+O+G = 4+15+6 = 25.
NO = 14+15 = 29
SLEEP = S+L+E+E+P = 19+12+5+5+16 = 57
HELP = H+E+L+P = 8+5+12+16 = 41
ME = M+E = 13+5 = 18
PLEASE = 16+12+5+1+19+5 = 58
See? And these numeric values would just be INHERENT to each object. I wouldn’t even have to calculate it. The values would somehow be necessarily instilled in everything, everywhere I looked.
Get your 8 hours each night, or you WILL lose your mind.
Until next time,
Michael J. Erickson, CEO & Co-Founder
