Sleep as a luxury

I never sleep. Those of you that know me, or have spent any serious time with me, know that I am constantly in a state of analyzing incoming data. This is my curse I suppose. When I was working in Washington I would spend countless hours going between news reports on Bloomberg while I read over transcripts from past hearings in the House Financial Services Committee and cross-referencing that with the text of laws that were past either years ago or were yet to be voted on. That was my life and I loved it. I was happy. Having a non-existent personal life; though I did have a girl who claimed to love me at some distant law school (a claim she later maintained but no longer desired the ring that I gave her prior to my moving to China; which of course any adult knows means "you're not the one for me"), did not seem to bother me that much. I was simply preparing myself for the future that I was destined to inherit. A future of building my company and changing the world on my terms. The girl, job, and Bloomberg turned out to be not that important. But the reading and the constant pouring over incessant amounts of information--like grad school never stopped for me--was.

As I slowly build a company, establish a network of contacts in China, and make myself useful to the world around me; these habits are turning out to be vital. But I honestly have thought for years that I am crazy. I just can't turn this damn thing off. I think about numbers and trade projections and debt to repayment ratios when there is the least amount of distraction for me: just prior to sleeping. So here I sit writing to no one...at half past three in the morning in Beijing. And there is no one around to talk to. All I am waiting for ultimately is a phone call from a bunch of rich people to tell a business partner of mine that they would love to give him a pile of money...which he will then split into smaller piles of money...of which one of them is mine. Sadly I don't get to spend the money on anything fun; but I do get to hopefully use it to help employ some people so that next Christmas they won't be as worried about money for presents for their families because they will be working in a factory that I helped get orders for goods and products from. See, to me that is the essence of giving. I will be working on Christmas day this year because I mistakenly believe all that crap that giving is better than recieving etc. Christmas day I will be having meetings with the Chinese because they call Christmas Day "Thursday." Next year it will correspond with the day of the week it falls on also. Hopefully I won't have to worry so much about other things next year and it won't be as bad. Only time will tell.

Right now I just want the phone to ring so I can have some peace of mind...not that it will be enough for me to fall asleep though. I can only think of a few times when it was easy for me to do something normal like fall asleep quickly. Oh well. Be well dear reader.

--A Wise Man in the East