staceybooks

It’s 9:15 PM.

I’ve been laying here for 45 minutes, staring into the darkness like some kind of insomniac philosopher, trying to sleep because I have to wake up at 5 AM and drive two hours and fifteen minutes to Memphis. You would think my brain would say, “Let’s rest, we’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

But no. My ADHD brain is like, “What if we rethink our entire personality instead?”

Apparently, bedtime is not for sleeping. It’s for having a full-blown internal strategy meeting. A meeting I did not call. A meeting with no agenda. A meeting where every random department in my brain shows up and starts yelling over each other.

The Anxiety Team wants to discuss every text I forgot to answer in the last 3 months. The Planning Committee suddenly has urgent thoughts about what I should wear to an event next Thursday. The Creativity Department? Oh, they’re thriving. They just pitched a brand new workforce program, a side hustle, and a podcast called “Stacey in the Sheets” where I talk about all the brilliant things I think of instead of sleeping.

Meanwhile, my body is over here like, “Ma’am. I am exhausted. I did everything you asked today. I drank the water. I stretched. I even ate vegetables. Can you give me a break?”

But my brain is still up making to-do lists. Not practical ones either. No, these are color-coded, overly ambitious, and somehow include things like “learn Spanish” and “reorganize the closet by emotional significance.”

And don’t even get me started on the CPO part of my brain. That one’s got spreadsheets open, thinking about budgets, grant compliance, partnerships, student engagement, and whether I remembered to respond to that one email that I for sure flagged but never actually opened.

Oh, and let’s not forget the memory gremlin that shows up around 9:30. She’s the one who whispers, “Remember that weird thing you said at a meeting in 2018?” Yeah. She’s here too.

It’s like my brain becomes the world’s worst coworking space the moment I try to rest. No one’s using headphones. Someone brought tuna. And the whiteboard just says “TRY HARDER” in red marker.

Meanwhile, I have to be fully functioning in less than eight hours. Hair done. Outfit picked. Smile on. CPO energy. But right now I’m just a potato in pajamas, haunted by my own thoughts and the creeping suspicion that I forgot to send someone a calendar invite.

Anyway. I’m going to try to sleep. Or at least pretend to sleep. Or scroll memes about ADHD brains not sleeping until I pass out with the phone on my face.

Goodnight from the brain that refuses to shut up.