Sleepless in Shanghai: Prospects Dimming for Chance of Sleep

I've never found falling asleep easy. Nights upon nights I've laid in bed struggling to figure out the magic formula to getting good, natural sleep. Especially here in China, where every night I'm struck by the fact that I'm in fucking China, the nights have been tough. But in all these years, I don't think this problem has ever kept me up all night, as it stands to at this point. With the Shanghai sun creeping under the square hole in the wall I lamentably call my window, I know that China is getting ready for just another Tuesday. In a way this helps me get through it all, but I have to first convince myself* that sleep is overrated anyway.** People are gearing up for another day of business and some poor soul is getting ready for a tragically long commute across town. All I have to do is go to the office and pretend to work. Someone else always has it worse. 

*I engage in my fair share of self-delusion, and not just with sleep. 

**I know it's not. But this is exactly what keeps me up at night. 

The worst thing about the lack of sleep is the feeling that I'm losing time off the tail end of my life. This isn't entirely scientific, nor may it even be reasonable, but I feel like sleepless nights must come back to bite you in the ass at some point. Like, you'll lose a few dozen brain cells or your cortisone levels will spike, causing adverse long-term physiological effects on body fat storage, or something. It basically simmers down to this: nothing good has ever come out of this kind of sleeplessness. It's not like I'm averting a nuclear showdown or working a second job to pay the bills. No, I'm just recording my aimless thoughts in the wee hours of the morning, wondering whether this constitutes a first- or second-world problem, what I'm going through.* Whatever it may be, I'm willing to give this sleep thing another try, for the reason put forth in an earlier asterisked aside. The title of this blog has yet to resonate so strongly, for this entire night has just been one long trip aboard the struggle-to-fall-asleep bus. Truly, the worst bus to be on short of the struggle-to-stand-last-Sunday bus. 

*Leaning toward the former as I'm inclined to do, but without the air of entitlement that usually colors such challenges.