How to go to bed.

Start the day tired but borderline-anxiously wide-eyed. Receive a hoped-for, short but sweet good morning and good luck e-mail. Find out your class will be meeting somewhere different than you've been planning, twenty minutes before you're due to leave. Reread a poem. Find yourself a little more highly strung than you'd expected. Teach your first class. Have a student tell you, "That was fun. I'm not scared anymore." Go home for lunch but don't eat. Go back for office hours but forget your wallet and power adapter. See people aplenty. Go out for coffee and have breakfast. Go home for an errand and then try to settle in and work. Fumble the copier. Keep working. Diffuse yourself into teaching a second class. Sit staring at your desk for a few minutes. Pack up. Go home. Heat up some milk. Try to decide whether to keep working. Recognize that the work will still be here in the morning. Recognize that the afternoon class will get off the ground regardless. Decide to sleep. Decide to sleep. Decide to sleep. Feel hot milk kicking in. Decide to sleep. Go off to sleep. Don't change your mind.