Loco De Mayo

Or,

Steps of How Not to Sleep on (Potentially) Your Only Night Off in May

• End the evening venting about professional and romantic feelings with your witty German actress buddy, because THAT will be uplifting for BOTH of you. It ALWAYS is. (Sorry Toni. You're great. I brought us down. My bad.)
• It's now 8:30pm, sooo....go home. It's time.
• Converse with roommates. Be momentarily uplifted because they rock. 
• Realize the Mindy Project rocks. You watch and laugh together with your roommate LIKE A FAMILY OR SOMETHING until the show seems all too painfully familiar and you need distraction from the pain. 
• Wait. You just said you're in pain from watching a sitcom? What's wrong with you. Goodness gracious.
• Existential crisis.
• You need distraction. You are thinking too deeply into things, so you should waste time on Facebook. 
• Waste time on Facebook.
• Be disgusted with yourself for wasting time on Facebook and decide to do something productive.
• Be productive. In your brain right now, 'being productive' somehow means sending a thinly disguised needy email to your boss asking for positive feedback without overtly asking for positive feedback but really actually just asking for positive feedback. Because, let's face it, you are feeling needy.
• Admit you're feeling needy. Try to channel your thoughts in more positive directions. End up thinking about all the lines you have yet to memorize and all the dayjob stuff you have yet to finish.
• Briefly think about studying your lines, decide not to.
• Reprimand yourself. 
• That self-reprimand was harsh. Feel needy again.
• Existential crisis 2.
• Call your mother because you are feeling needy. She answers the phone by saying she just sat down and is taking her first bite of pizza. 
• Feel guilty. Say goodnight. 
• Feel needy. Feel guilty for feeling needy.
• Roll your eyes at yourself.
• Repeat.
• Start to really wish you were eating pizza with your mother and get all nostalgic, then suddenly get really, really hungry. 
• Once the hunger beats the nostalgia, remember that you had a cookie for dinner instead of dinner. Feel both proud of/disheartened by your choices and decide that although you deserve to eat again if you want, you have already brushed your teeth and having to do it again sounds too hard.
• The time is now 11:00pm, somehow. Try to account for the last 2.5 hours. Fail.
• Take a sleeping pill.
• Turn out the lights.
• Check your email on your phone in case your boss wrote something nice. Aw, he did! Feel less needy.
• Now you can't stop thinking about pizza. Try to channel your thoughts in a more positive direction.
• Existential crisis 2.1: over-analyze everything in your life. Decide that if you are thinking so much, it means you must care, and being able to care is good, right? So, that's good. Maybe you're okay, since you care. But then, caring about something doesn't necessarily mean it's important, does it? Maybe you're caring too much about things that don't matter? So, that's bad. Also, why are you thinking about this now? Is it urgent? No. Can you fix anything? No.
• Self-reprimand 2: WHY AREN'T YOU OFF-BOOK FOR STUFF YET!?
• Ask yourself: what pizza places are open right now?
• Try to sleep.
• Try to stop thinking about pizza.
• Pizza.
• Pizza on a bagel.
• The leaning tower of pizza.
• Pizza pizza.
• Oh my god.
• Try to distract yourself from pizza, because it's now 11:30pm and there is no cheap pizza available, probably. Do anything/everything to forget the crushing desire for pizza. 
• Examine your freezer. There's no pizza. 
• Eat some cheese with nothing.
• Identify the solitary late-night scarfing of cheese with nothing as an allegory for your life. Realize that thought makes no sense.
• Roll your eyes at yourself. Again.
• Go to bed. Again.
• Think about pizza. Again.
• Remember that it's Cinco de Mayo. Think about Mexican food. 
• Remember that you forgot to brush your teeth again.
• Give up. On everything, maybe. Or maybe just on your immediate desires. Just give up.
• Feel suddenly better. Have you moved past wanting? Wow, is this non-attachment?
• Achieve enlightenment.
• Fall asleep. Dream of pizza.