It’s three thirty-six AM…and guess where I am?

Paragliding!!!!

No, that’s not true…that is a bold-faced lie and a major improbability.

I wouldn’t do that in the dark.

Who knows what could happen?

Something could happen.

What is really going on is that I couldn’t sleep.

I could probably sleep…my eyes are tired….I don’t think that there’s anything physical going on that would keep me from sleeping.

I should sleep.

I can’t sleep.

My mind is running around inside my head.

It’s like something needs to bust out.

We are working our way towards buying another place …another chunk of “place”…down the road from us.

It’s a piece of land that has a lot going for it….trees, fields, streams…a pond…barn…old farm house that needs a total rehab….easy access…some good additional building sites.

It has a lot of potential.

But all I can think when I wake up at three in the morning and start my “staring at the ceiling routine” is….“WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?!!!!”

WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?!!!!WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?!!!!!!WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?!!!!!!

What if I can’t fix the electrical weirdness? What if the plumbing is weirdly inaccessible and I can’t even get to what I don’t know how to fix? What if there’s something living down in the “crawl space” and when I slither down into it to try and fix the plumbing something slithers up onto me? What if there is a bunch of Indians buried under the house and they get mad when I play my boombox too loud…or don’t like the sound of hammering? What if it takes me forever to figure out how to spell “inaccessible”? What if I “don’t know”? What if I “do know”…but can’t? What if I can’t?!! What if there is lead paint that I inhale or eat? What if the people around me eat lead paint? How would I deal with all this lead paint that people are eating? What if I stop caring about what’s happening to me after I eat all this lead paint?!! How about asbestos? How about that? Or the black mold? Or some guy who lives in the barn that I didn’t notice before who’s hard to evict?

WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?!!

What if I get so tired that I can’t even function like a normal human man should?!!

That kind of thought process will keep you up at night, for sure.

That’s some crazy stuff to think about.

But, you know…something is going to happen. Something always does. I can’t avoid it…no matter how many videos I’ve rented…no matter how many ways I’ve tried to divert the ever-charging influx of life and it’s influence on my… life…something is always going to be happening.

Good…or maybe occasionally bad…something always happens.

Maybe a better question…an even more terrifying one to add to my portfolio of dread…is “WHAT IF NOTHING HAPPENS?!!!”

What if I get to the end and someone says, “Well? How did it go?” and all I can say is something like, “Well…I guess it all went OK….I can’t really remember anything happening, really…but I guess that it went OK. It was alright, I guess.”

I guess it’s better to be able to say that something happened.

I still can’t sleep…but I guess it’s better that something is happening.

I do need to check that barn more carefully next time I go out there, though.