I've been awake for over a half hour. By my calculations, this means I got about 4 hours of sleep. Not enough, especially considering I've been running like this for the past several nights. Some exceptional people might be able to thrive like this on an ongoing basis. I am not such an exceptional person.

This means that I must face reality. Experience tells me that I am going to crash, just as surely as the petroleum-based civilization in which we live.

Before bed, I meditated for 20 minutes, took a 300mg dose of lithium, and went straight to sleep. The only problem is that my body decided its sleep cycle was complete long before morning had dawned. It is still pitch black outside.

Ten minutes ago, I took another 300mg dose of lithium, along with a 2mg dose of melatonin. We'll see what that does.

At this point, I intend to keep taking the lithium on a daily or bi-daily (or maybe even tri-daily) basis until this episode is well past its peak. However, as I once attempted to tell a friend, I cannot guarantee the actions of a future self whose state of mind I will not know until it arrives.

With a little luck, I may be able to engineer and guide my own little personal Slow Crash, to occur over the course of the next few days and weeks. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to navigate it without royally fucking everything up.

Another factor is stress. My ambition has led me to take on more commitments, all of which I intend to fulfill if I can. But I must put a moritorium on new ones. Stress is known to act as an accelerant in these cases, so it must be minimized.

Also, I may need to do something that is generally against my usual pattern of operating: turn to others and say, "Hey, I really need help." There are good people I know at the church, though I have not known them long. I think they would be supportive. Yanthor and Anya too. I'm still debating whether to go to L on Monday and say, "I still love this place and want to work here, and I intend to do the job for which you hired me, but there's something else you should know. Forgive me for not disclosing this before. Just in case I start acting really kooky, here's what's going on..."

I don't know though. I'll have to ponder that one.

More thoughts abound, but I'm going to settle on this for now. I'll now attempt more relaxation and calming techniques.

The best case is that this will all amount to little more than the Y2K scare: A whole lotta hype over nothing. But the twist is that had the hype not happened, sufficient preparation and countermeasures might not have been taken, and then there could have been a real crisis. The same may apply to me now.

Anyway, enough blather. I'm going to get off this computer and lie back down.