I can’t sleep. I don’t know what the problem is, but I’ve been this way since early in the Carter administration and I’ve come to accept it. Back then I was a “night person,” which has a nice ring and conjures up images of neon lights, silk shirts, and dancing to Rod Stewart records until the wee hours. Today, my sleep problem is the same, but I’m too old to be a night person, so now I’m just an insomniac. What a come down. Thankfully, just as I was entering middle age, the World Wide Web arrived to break my fall.
Cruising the Web at night is not much different from flipping through late-night cable TV programs: you just want to find something that’s worth your time. In my case, that means a sports page, a news page, a game site, or TheOfficialHomerSimpsonFanClub.com.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve set my home page to a sports site. This so I can stay abreast of issues that deeply affect my life such as trade deadlines, salary caps, and The Breeder’s Cup. On slow sports days, I like to branch off into a chat room, where I can participate in such threads as: “Do you think the Angels will pick up Tim Salmon’s contract option in 2009?” and “Has Chipper Jones developed a slight hitch when hitting to the opposite field?” (Bear in mind that I’m not well.)
A recent survey showed that more than 25 percent of Americans get their news primarily from the Web. Count me among them. At various times in my life, I’ve subscribed to newspapers and magazines at no small price. But soon after I first hooked up to the Web, the paper products started piling up in the corner, unneeded and unread, while I happily perused their virtual versions online. The great thing about Web news is its immediacy. Whenever something happens anywhere in the world, it’s posted on the Web just minutes later. I should make it clear that I’m not a tech wizard who thinks that the high-tech solution is always better than the traditional one. But I do, by choice, work in the capricious and fickle software world. And my work life operates better when I’m informed, and quickly. Besides, it only takes a few minutes, and then I can move on to the games.
Being a writer, I gravitate toward word and trivia games, which abound on the Web. The game sites I visit the most are MSN and Boxerjam, both of which offer dozens of online games that let you play alone or compete against other insomniacs. I prefer to compete because it makes me feel superior when I score higher than the insomniacs in, say, Buffalo or Chattanooga. But some people are pros at this stuff. They play so much that they start memorizing the answers and wait for the puzzles to repeat themselves. They’re quick to the draw and always get the answer right. They have time for this because, in addition to being unable to sleep, they apparently spend their days waiting for their government check to come so they can pay their Internet Service bill and play more games. I can’t compete against people who have no jobs, so I get frustrated and quit. By then, it’s 3 a.m. and I can usually drift off to dreamland.
Do I wish I could get to sleep sooner? Sure. But if I must have a nightly Web routine, this isn’t a bad one to follow. Of course, I’m always on the lookout for new and better sites to add to my repertoire, so if you know of any, I’d appreciate it if you’d email the links to me.
I’ll be up. Late.
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