my jetlagging lifestyle

I'm spending a few days in New York en route to Zurich, where I will spend a few days en route to Spain, where I will spend a week before turning it all around and doing it in reverse, but with less down time at each pit stop.

I've been walking through my days here doing my best impression of a non-brain-eating zombie. I admire the people in New York who dress up and stay out late on random nights of the week, daytime schedules be damned -- I used to be one of them, on occasion, but I can no longer convince myself to give up sleep in favor of shoes that pinch my feet. If New York is the city that never sleeps, I've become the person that never quite wakes up.

Ever since finishing high school, I've needed more sleep than your average bear in order to retain my ability to put together complete sentences and not walk into walls. In lean times, I average eight or nine hours a night, and make up for it on weekends. In times when sleep is plentiful, I've been known to sleep eighteen hours out of every 24 hour period. In college, I considered it to be an all-nighter when I stayed up late writing a paper, and only got six hours of sleep. I grew an inch the year after I graduated from college, when I was sleeping twelve to fourteen hours every night, probably because my body didn't have to fight much gravity, since I was sleeping so much.

Despite this personal elevated need for an unreasonable amount of sleep, I am a lawyer (how do lawyers work those hours?), and I miss New York (how do New Yorkers live those hours?).

I left SFO on Friday night, and I still haven't recovered. I'm not sure whether to blame it on jetlag (even though I've had 3.5 days to get over a three hour time difference) or lack of sleep (even though I've been sleeping about seven hours a night, which is perfectly reasonable for most people).

I leave today for Zurich, and I'm bracing myself for an even more brutal round of jetlagged sleep deprivation. Oh, the sacrifices we make for travel, friends, and fun...