Right now, it is 4:26am, I should be sound asleep as my alarm is set to go off in one hour and four minutes – but I am instead wide awake typing this column – because I have been up since 11:30pm last night.

“I woke up this morning last night” is an expression I invented due to the fact that this is not the first time this has happened to me. In January of 2001, I went to bed at 9:00pm and woke up at 11:30pm – which is pretty much exactly what happened to me tonight – and wrote a column with the same title. In a nutshell – I could not go back to sleep right now if I took a horse tranquilizer – and for the life of me – I can’t figure out why.

As it stands now, my life is great. I have a wonderful job, good financial status, the girl of my dreams, my son Beavis back with me, a beautiful apartment – and a whole new life – and yet, I am sitting here at my computer, eyes burning, writing this column. Before I went to bed tonight, I had a great sushi dinner, had a few beers – and even took Tylenol PM – only to wake up two hours later and toss and turn in my bed until 2:30am – when I finally gave up and got out of bed to at least do something productive with this time that has been robbed from me.

I know people that could sleep through anything – as Julie could sleep through a nuclear war – but not me. I wake up if a butterfly flaps it’s wings in London’s Piccadilly Circus. No matter how tired my body is and how comfortable I am in the position my body is in – my mind is wide awake. In other words, when I am lying there wide awake – my body is so limp and numb that you could probably perform open heart surgery on it without anesthesia – but my mind is as alert as if I were briefing an Army Colonel. Even now as I sit here typing these words, knowing in less than four hours I am to be in a suit doing my job – I could not go to sleep if you hit me with a Mack truck – even though that is what I want more than anything in this world.

The most frustrating part of this ordeal is that at 5:29am – less than an hour from now and one minute before my alarm is set to go off – both my mind and body will be ready to tuck themselves in. Sure, when I can sleep, my body wants no part of it – but when it is time to get up – my body once again turns against me and is ready to catch some “Zs.”

If you were to ask me the last night it was that I actually slept through the entire evening – I honestly could not answer. As far back as my memory stretches – I have no recollection of getting a full night’s sleep. Sure, people lose sleep over stress, jobs, money and other issues like that – but right now – my life is in a great place – so why is this happening to me?

I recently reached out to Deborah Hospital here in New Jersey, which claims to be a sleep center specialist. I hope they are – because if I have to endure anymore of this – I may as well throw away my bed and turn that room into another office.

There is only another forty-seven minutes until my alarm goes off – so I may as well do what I have come to do every morning when I foolishly set my alarm and close my eyes for the brief seconds my body does sleep…

…prepare to watch yet another sunrise.