Post red-eye blues: A wimp now, I once did all-nighters

IN TRANSITION #19

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | December 4, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

High up in the sky somewhere over Western Massachusetts, I listened to the hum of the airplane mixed with snores of the passenger in 36D, and tried unsuccessfully not to think about the cramp in my right leg. Between the many pesky thoughts about work and school, family and turkey bouncing around my head was the sad realization: It was going to be a very long Monday.

I just didn't know how long.

''Use the breathing method," my mother had instructed me on our way to the San Francisco airport. ''When you sleep, you exhale for longer. You can fool your brain into sleep mode by doing that." (Where do moms pick up these things?)

But it hadn't worked. There was so much turbulence on my flight home after Thanksgiving I kept getting jarred awake. My starchy synthetic blanket -- useless. I'd be going to work, for the first time, on no sleep.

As I watched the sun come up, I was reminded of the last time I took the red-eye from SFO to Logan. It was early September 2001, flying East to college for the first time. I had squandered that night of slumber, too. It didn't matter. On my move-in day, I fed on the adrenaline. My cheeks were pressed to the windows of the cab as we pulled up to the campus gates. I woke up one roommate by knocking wildly on the door of my new dorm room. I threw down my bags and accompanied him to CVS, where I wandered up and down the aisles too antsy to think about what I might need to actually buy.

This time, the adrenaline was painfully absent.

Over Thanksgiving dinner, I had dealt with a barrage of questions from my family: ''What are you doing now?" ''How does it feel to be done?" ''Do you like your apartment?" ''Where do you see yourself in a few years?"

They assured me that everyone goes from job to job in their 20s. Everyone feels aimless. For a while. It's a rite of passage.

I tried to keep it all in perspective as I quietly and sleepily slid back into my daily routine. Typing. Photocopying. Researching.

Everything so thoroughly uninspiring.

My stamina wasn't quite what it used to be, either. I once considered myself an academic athlete. Among other things, college trained me to push through on no-sleep days. I used to handle them with zest. (Then again, as a student, I could crash after trekking across campus, bleary-eyed, to turn in a last-minute paper.)

''Sorry, could you go through that once more?" I floated through e-mails and telephone calls. I barely made it through my first hazy post-all-nighter work day, sucking down coffee, espresso, diet soda, and more coffee. You can't take naps at work, but at least you can take stimulants.

By the time I got home that day, jittery, my bed had never looked more inviting. I made my lunch for Tuesday. Ironed. (OK, no, but at least I thought about how I should iron.) How grown-up I pretend to be. How far I've come.

I went to bed dreaming of that view from the plane, descending through the clouds -- that glimpse of the whole of Boston from the harbor. So beautiful. How promising it had once looked. Still does. I think.

Benjamin Toff, a recent grad making (and resisting) the transition from college student to working stiff, lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.