As I write this, it’s 3AM on Sunday, July 23rd. It’s my last night — well, last morning now — in San Diego, and insomnia has struck.
I could blame the hotel bed, which is almost the archetypal hotel bed: a little too soft, a little formless and with pillows that are more like suggestions of pillows that are somehow too soft and too hard all at once; pillows that you almost have to ignore in order to sleep in the first place, never mind struggle against when your mind won’t stop talking in the middle of the night.
Or perhaps I could blame the fact that it’s a Saturday night/Sunday morning, which has meant a lot of noise in the corridor outside in the last few hours as people return back from drunken nights out and slam all their doors and giggle loudly, in both cases fully believing that they’re being really, really quiet. That was fun to eavesdrop on, and truth be told, it was what originally woke me up an hour or so ago.
That’s not why I’m still awake, though. My mind is racing because I’m headed into the final day of San Diego Comic-Con and it’s been a weird, busy — very busy — and emotionally taxing show, one that’s left me at once exhausted and oddly exhilarated. I both can’t believe it’s almost over and can’t remember fully what life was like before this, if that makes sense.
By the time you read this, it’ll be tomorrow and I’ll be back in Portland again, likely better rested and reality will be reasserting itself. That’s why I wrote this, though; to record a moment in time when I couldn’t sleep in San Diego, and I realized that all I really want to do, despite everything, is just read some comics. I guess that shows the power of Comic-Con, somehow.