I was having a hard time falling asleep the other night because I’d thought of something that I was afraid of forgetting if I fell asleep, which was keeping me awake. Not that it was the sort of timeless thing you see printed on coffee cups sold in bookstores, like, “Hope is the thing with feathers” or the one Thoreau said about confidently pursuing your dreams, which now I forget the rest of. 

Sleep is the great blessing of retirement, especially for someone like me – or is it “someone like myself”? I used to know this – someone who in his working years (so-called, in my case, because my work was talking and telling stories, no heavy lifting involved) – and I was crisscrossing time zones and going from EST to PST. I’d be awake at 1 and 2 with a plane to catch at 7 so I could make it to a benefit in New York for Rich People Who Wish To Help Poor People Without Having To Be In Physical Contact With Them and I couldn’t sleep on planes because of a fear of dying in a plane crash and, having been brought up evangelical, I wanted to be awake for my death so I could quickly repent for any unforgiven sins and make sure I’d go to heaven and meet Grandma and Grandpa and not go to hell and spend eternity with Stalin and Hitler.