All Nighter

It’s been a long time since I pulled an all-nighter, but a combination of too many tasks, a mental block against starting some of them, constant interruptions at work, and the knowledge that, whatever I came up with would be revised by the higher-ups, caused me to procrastinate on a large project that was due Monday. On Sunday I started at noon and worked furiously on the laptop, pausing only for dinner.

There were eight spreadsheets open, and my cursor glided across them, cutting, pasting, and linking. By midnight the temptation to go to bed was nearly irresistible but I summoned a distant memory of putting the finishing touches on term papers as dawn rose over the Old Campus. Did I still have the stamina of that college freshman of decades past? Were my powers fading, or could I persevere to the end?

I ploughed on and finished at 4:15 a.m. I forced myself to check the numbers for obvious mistakes, and my head hit the pillow for two hours. A pot of coffee, then off to work.

I have to go to Hillsdale Station early to walk around the construction.