If you follow this blog, do not make the mistake of thinking you can figure out when I"m home, working, sleeping, etc., from the time-stamps on these posts. I sometimes write them way ahead. I sometimes write them and have them posted by a timer function that puts them online later.
This is probably true of most bloggers. The postings of my buddy Ken Levine all go online at 6 AM when Ken is probably lost in slumberland.
I've been meaning to mention that here since one night when I went to bed at 3 AM after setting a Video Link to be posted at 6 AM…and a friend saw it and thought it was safe to call me at 6:15 AM.
Lately, no one knows when I'll be asleep, least of all me. I have so very few appointments these days that I'm keeping stranger hours than I ever have. I even serialize my sleep at times.
My body seems to need 5-6 hours per night and I sometimes sleep four hours when it's dark out and two more when the sun is shining. My mother used to sleep double those hours but in the same unpredictable patterns when she was in her eighties. Now here I'm doing it, less than a month shy of turning 69.
There is surely some wisdom to sleeping whenever your body seems to want to sleep, and I've had very little luck making it go beddy-bye before it's good and ready to. Still, my body clock sometimes doesn't listen to my body. It sometimes wakes me when it decides I shouldn't sleep past 9 AM even when I went to bed at 6.
If I can keep my mind off current work — the stuff I'm going to resume writing whenever I get to the computer — I can often fall back asleep for another hour or so. If I start thinking about it, that's it. I'm up and there's no going back to Dreamland until I write something.
In what I jokingly call my career, I've sometimes had jobs where I had to get up in the morning five days a week — occasionally six or even seven days a week — and be at a studio somewhere by 10 AM or so. It was understood that if we were there doing rewrites until four in the morning, I might not be there at 10 or 11 but I still had to show up when I could.
There were good things about most of those jobs…things that made it worth waking up in time to be there, even though it might have meant going to bed earlier than my body felt appropriate. Or just plain not getting enough sleep.
I may or may not have one of those jobs in the future. I like working at home because that usually means I can sleep when I want to and work when I want to. But there have been times I was willing to give that up. When I wrote variety shows or sitcoms, I practically had to live at a studio. I never slept at one but there were nights when it might have made more sense.
Again, sometimes the job was so wonderful in so many ways, I'd make that kind of sacrifice and so might you.
Around 1985, my agent sent me to meet with a producer who wanted to hire me to write a TV program. It was an enticing job. The show looked like it could be very good and very educational and there were a lot of creative challenges and perks and reasons to grab it. Oh, and the money? That was good, too. The producer seemed like a great guy and I sensed we'd get along fine. But there were downsides, starting with the fact that he would not allow me to work at home.
I would have to report to the office every day, five days a week — or more, as needed. What's more, I had to be there at 9 AM and not leave until at least 5 PM. And the office was way the hell out in the valley, perhaps an hour commute each way. It was about the only rule he had and he said it was non-negotiable. I tried negotiating anyway…
"How about if I come in some days and not others? Or later in the day? I sometimes write better late at night and in my own office at home. If you always have the scripts when you need them, why does it matter if I'm here at nine?"
He answered me: "Because I always get in at nine and if I walk past your office and nobody's there, I feel like I'm being cheated out of an hour's pay."
I said, "But on this job, you wouldn't be paying me by the hour. You'd be paying me by the job — X dollars per episode. I get the same money if I write the script in thirty hours or sixty hours. I get the same money if I write it here or write it at home. It costs you the exact same amount if I write it at 3 PM or 3 AM."
He said, "I know, believe me I know. But when I was a kid, I worked in a shop that did transmission work. We opened at nine and the boss screamed at me if I wasn't there at 8:30 sharp. I walked in one morning at 8:35 and he yelled, 'The next time you do that, you're fired!' I've never been able to shake the concept that that's how jobs work. I feel I'm paying someone who isn't working and therefore isn't earning their money."
I asked, "How would you feel if I had to stay late and I was there for many hours after 5 PM? Would you feel you weren't paying me enough?"
He said, "No, I'd feel like you'd goofed off all day and it was your fault you had to work late to finish."
I said, "Supposing I work 10 AM to 6 PM? Same number of hours for the same money!"
He shook his head and said, "But then you wouldn't be here at nine. I know it doesn't make sense but I can't change."
I said, "I could be here every day at nine but I can't guarantee I wouldn't wind up falling asleep at my desk occasionally."
He said that would be okay. "I don't mind if you sleep on my time. But my time starts at nine o'clock."
I didn't take that job because it would have meant getting up every morning at 7 AM, regardless of when I fell asleep the night before. And these days, whenever I wake up around 7 AM, I remind myself that I don't have that job. I don't have to get up right then and shower and get dressed and prepping to run out. And then I smile and I try to go back to sleep.