I couldn't sleep for a long time. Now I can.

This year, I am thankful for the ability to sleep. Because until earlier this year, I hadn’t slept well for most of a decade. And it was killing me. Let me tell you a story...

I trace my years of bad sleep back to the surgeries I had in 2011. My already-bad nasal passageways were messed up even more by a bad attempt to shove an oxygen tube up them before the second surgery, with the result that almost no air got through afterward. (I was a mouthbreather by necessity.) I never really recovered from those surgeries -- my torso is broken -- and my sleep was the worst outcome of all: During my last years in Philly, I would fall asleep at work (humiliating -- I even fell asleep during a cop corruption trial in front of colleagues) or wake up in my home at night having sleptwalk around the place. A couple of times I woke up because I was accidentally injuring myself.

And the exhaustion was total.

My life felt awful. My ability to hold a regular job, instead of freelancing, felt awful. (Spending eight hours in an office was an ungodly challenge.) My blood pressure and weight ballooned. Depression set in. I couldn’t read a book or watch a movie without falling asleep. Everything was a struggle.

A nasal surgery a couple of years back helped restore some function -- I haven’t sleptwalk in a couple of years -- but honestly -- I entered 2020 ready, and maybe even willing, to be done. To die. It was that bad. It had been years since I slept more than about two hours at a stretch, and even that sleep was nastily oxygen deprived.

I took a sleep apnea test the night of the Iowa caucuses. It came back how I expected, but with a discouraging result: The CPAP machine they tried to use on me was impossible. I felt like I was drowning. I couldn’t keep it on for more than a few seconds at a time. I felt like I had run out of options.

Only, I hadn't.

One weird thing about the pandemic lockdown. They made me reset. I stopped eating out much. The result: No more fried foods. The reflux that had been a regular part of my life for years just ... kind of disappeared. And the anxiety made my heart palpitate a bit, so I stopped drinking coffee. And I adjusted my sleeping arrangements to prop my upper body up a bit so that my sleepy breathing is better. 

And sometime over the summer, I realized I'd had a few good nights of sleep. That I wasn't waking up all the time.

That I felt ... rested.

There is something of a virtuous feedback loop to all of this. Not being exhausted and out of oxygen has made it possible for me to exercise better than I have in a long time. Starting in August, I regularly walk two miles a day. When the year started, that would have been beyond me.

So the weird thing for me about 2020 is that I arrive at Thanksgiving more personally hopeful about my ability to live than I have been for years. I am a better father and husband than I was, I think. Not so crippled by depression, or an inability to walk more than a block without needing to find a seat. I am not all the way back -- and honestly, I probably won't get there. But I am a lot further back than I expected to be. I'd lost hope. Now I can sleep again. And everything about me is better for it.

The Pentagon's big old budget

 Stephen Wertheim speaks the truth: 

This is true about domestic priorities as well. I think it's weird, for example, that there is so much talk about having the military distribute a coronavirus vaccine. A country as prosperous as the United States has been should have a robust enough public health system to do that job, shouldn't it?

Call me Cassandra

Are people really arguing that because Donald Trump has failed to steal the election, the people who were worried he would try to steal the election are silly and overwrought?

Because ... he really tried to steal the election.

The Electoral College is failing on its own terms

I think about Federalist Paper No. 68 sometimes:

The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the Constitution, by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration. Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says: "For forms of government let fools contest That which is best administered is best,'' yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.

Read the whole thing, of course, but the Electoral College was intended to prevent corrupt figures from capturing the imagination of the masses and riding that adoration to the presidency. It failed to do so in 2016. Now Donald Trump is trying to game the system -- despite the clear preference of the masses --  to stay in office. The Electoral College is failing on its own terms. Demolish it.

One thing I have to remind myself of these days...

 ....is that I can be a serious person while also taking moments for frivolous things that bring me some small bit of joy in this miserable world.

So, yes, I just spent a few minutes perusing the Star Trek reddit.

Prosecuting Trump

At the beginning of the week, I was prepared to argue that investigating and prosecuting Trump -- at the federal level, at least -- would be more trouble than it's worth. I don't want the Biden Administration to *also* be all about Donald Trump. Four years is enough, right?

Now I think he's a tumor that must be excised. It will probably cause a lot of pain, but there has to be a price for his wholesale assault on the integrity of the election, on top of his thoroughgoing corruption.

My post-Trump future

I would really like to settle down for a few minutes to think about how to be an effective and quality opinion writer when Trump leaves office. The benefit of Trump's presidency was a certain, righteous clarity -- he is such a bad president, that often writing was a matter of waiting for him to do something bad, then criticize it. That's overly reductive, but not as much as I would like it to be. And I'm ok with that. Trump really is a bad president. Serving truth, in my mind, means constantly pointing how how he steers America wrong.

The problem with my whole "pivot to a post-Trump future" plan, though, is that Trump won't pivot. There's still too much happening. We should be looking forward to Joe Biden's presidency. Right now, though, the current president is still keeping all of us on our tippy toes.