...road trippin'! That
was lame, I know. I'm sorry. I'll try to never do that again...
Okay, onto business then!
I used to work in a bar. A really shady, sleazy bar frequented by
bohemians, lunatics, hipsters, bums and alcoholics. The bar itself
was in the basement of a dilapitated building and the fornt door was
actually in a dark alley. Sound good yet? Yeah, it was basically the
kind of place where you might get stabbed or robbed but never roofied
because most of the clientele wouldn't have enough money for drugs.
I started the job because
I needed the money... and since I was studying physiotherapy at the
time I needed a job that wouldn't get in the way of school. As a
bartender my working hours were from 18.30 to around 4.00-5.00 in the
morning, depending on the day. On weekends it was until 7 in the
morning. The job was... less than perfect. Minimum wage, barely any
tips (because Estonians aren't very good tippers), a horrible boss
and insane customers. Sure, there were good nights where I would meet
and chat with some interesting people, try out new cocktail recipes
and get a decent tip by the end of the night. But not all nights were
like that and there were times I just felt like walking out in the
middle of my shift and just rage quitting right then and there.
I hated working on
weekends. Mostly because there were way too many people, all waiting
for their drinks and getting frustrated while doing so, and things
always went out of hand. People wouldn't want to leave, glasses would
go flying, fights would break out... it was just a mess. Sure, you'd
get a bigger tip but was it really worth it? Also, you'd get home
around 8 in the morning and then sleep the day away – something
that I really didn't feel like doing. I had little to no free time
anyway – I didn't want to spend my weekends in a half-comatose
state between waking and dream. So, I mostly ended up working
Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays. Business was slow on those days and it
was easier to fall asleep but I was never swamped with customers or
trying to handle 10 orders at once while everybody was screaming at
me to hurry up. Besides, you could actually hold conversations with
customers on those nights because there wasn't much else to do.
Did I mention I was
studying at the same time? Because I was. And it was horrible. On
paper it seemed to work: I would go to work, earn some money and I
didn't have to worry about missing class. In reality... I was a
moron. See, I had a habit of working several nights in a row and
that... was just a bad idea. I would start work on Sunday, get home
around 5 am on Monday morning, have two-three hours of sleep, wake up
at 8 am and then head to class... Sometimes classes lasted until 4
pm, meaning I had two hours to go home, get a bite to eat and head
back to work... And I repeated that cycle again and again, spending
the night working on Monday, getting home around 5 on Tuesday,
heading back to school, then back to work and then back home... And
suddenly it was Wednesday and I had no idea where the time went.
To be honest, I don't
remember much about my studies during that period. I was operating on
3-4 hours of sleep every day and half the time I had no idea what was
going on in school. I remember one week in particular. I'd spent
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday working so on Wednesday I was pretty much
just floating through life like a jellyfish: with no brain and
nowhere to go, just at the mercy of the waves. Classes lasted until
around 2 pm and I remember my friends Terje and Anu meeting me right
after class to announce that we were going on a little road trip. It
was winter and there was snow everywhere. Also it was cold. And I was
barely registering what they were saying. But yeah, sure. Road trip
it was... I was way too tired and loopy to oppose so the next thing I
know I was sitting in the back of a car, going... god knows where...
I don't know who's car it
was. I don't know where we went. I kind of remember one of them
asking me if I was angry with them, to which I responded with: 'Nah,
I'm fine. Just sleepy...' And that was the truth. I had no capacity
for anger or any emotion, to be honest. I had found peace. A
zen-state. I was on my way to Nirvana, floating away from my body,
all peace and love and understanding. I was one with the universe...
And then we were at a
church. In the middle of nowhere. It was a pretty church – on top
of a snow covered hill, glistening in the light of the setting sun.
We walked around it and then ran into the field. Whenever I see an
undisturbed blanket of pristine snow I just feel the need to mess it
up and at least I wasn't alone in that endeavor. We snapped some
pictures, looked around for a bit and then headed off. Where? Don't
remember. I just knew we had fun... Even I must've had fun, in my
zen-jellyfish-state.
That night I slept like a
baby – mostly because it was the first night of the week I actually
could sleep. I headed off to class the next morning and as I was
entering the classroom one of my fellow students asked me 'Hey, how
did you do on the test yesterday.'
Test? Yesterday? I had no
idea what she was on about. I hadn't taken a test. I couldn't
remember anything about it. Then I saw the pile of papers on the
professors desk. Everybody was going through it, looking for their
tests and suddenly someone handed me a piece of paper. I stared at it
blankly. Sure enough, it was my name on it. In my handwriting. I had
definitely answered all the questions myself. Just... I had no
recollection of taking this test. Even the questions didn't seem
familiar. Or the answers. But apparently I had taken this test just
one day prior... I got a B – which is remarkable when you consider
that I couldn't remember anything about the class, the test, the
topic or even my actions the day before! After that I kind of
realized that I should stop working three consecutive days and I
should probably focus on weekends from then on. To this day I have no
memory of taking that test. It's like I was in a coma and my evil
twin took it for me... Or maybe I slipped into a parallel universe
where I wasn't zombified due to the lack of sleep. Either way, moral
of the story is: sleep is good. I should really do it more often.
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