4am Email

I woke up at 4am with a congested headache, likely the result of that nasty combination of outdoor snow and ice and indoor dry heat. Surely, a glass of water would help, so I stumbled to the dark kitchen, poured and drank a bit, feeling the congestion clear with each sip. And then, I checked my email. Hey, I was up, and it would save me time later when I was rushing to make lunches and get kids out the door.
 
The problem with checking your email at 4am, particularly when you have gone to bed far earlier than the people who send all their emails at 11pm, is that you find out about a lot of things you don't really want to deal with at 4am, things that make it awfully hard to go back to sleep until 5. Mixed in with the department store solicitations and the daily news digests were forms to fill out and questions asked and things that needed responses. So when, having had my drink and calmed my headache, I crawled back into bed for my well-deserved, but almost missed, last hour of sleep, there was no sleep to be had. For while the department store solicitations and daily news digests had been moved to "Trash" without a second thought, the forms and the questions danced in my head as the minutes till the alarm ticked by. And before I knew it, I was up, well before the alarm. Because there is no point in sleeping when you're not sleeping. There are too many things to do, emails to read, responses to be sent.
 
The headache may still be clouding things, but the thoughts are still clear--never check your email at 4am--at least not if you plan to keep sleeping till 5.