A Big Mistake

Last night I needed to stay up till close to midnight to fire off a process for work that had to start after 11:30 pm but complete by midnight.  It was about 8:45 and I could already feel I was getting sleepy, not good.  I decided on an unconventional way to stay awake, do a live stream for a couple hours.  After all you can’t sleep if you are talking, right?  So in the span of 10 minutes I fired up a stream and started talking.  Despite the lack of notice I had 20-30 people that jumped in simultaneously. Although being on live helped me I still was feeling less than alert.  It was then that I made a big mistake, I decided I could use some coffee.

I did not feel like going through the hassle of brewing coffee so instead I grabbed the Folgers instant coffee that I typically only use in my mom’s chocolate cake recipe.  I heated up some water in a coffee cup in the microwave and then added three HUGE, heaping tablespoons of Folgers to it along with some God knows how old Coffemate powder creamer.  It was way too much coffee from a strength perspective in retrospect.

Not only was it strong, it tasted absolutely awful.  I had to dump some sugar in it just to get it down.  Despite the awful taste the caffeine definitely kicked in.  The cobwebs cleared and I once again felt awake, too awake.  I shut down the stream after a couple hours and ran the task I needed to do at about 11:45PM, it went fine.

I went back and took a shower.  When I laid in the bed I immediately noticed that despite the very late hour I was not feeling tired, at all.  It was at this moment I knew I had a problem.   I simply could not get my brain to wind down.  The end result of this was my being awake most of the night, getting a couple hours of sleep, maybe.  It was a lesson I will not forget anytime soon.