For my footloose and fancy free readers who currently have no small children in the house, there is a good chance that they have never read “Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She was Extinct”, by Mo Willems. It’s a shame they haven’t read this gem, because there is profound wisdom within its text.

Here’s the story: Edwina is a well-loved member of the community, and she brings happiness and cookies to all of the townsfolk. There is one boy who has an issue with this: not with the cookies part, but with the dinosaur herself.  The boy with the fantastic name, Reginald von Hoobie-Doobie, is a lad of science and reason, and he knows that dinosaurs are extinct. He cannot understand why no one else seems to care about this. Assuming the townsfolk are simply uninformed, Reginald goes to great length to try to explain to the townspeople that they are friends with a creature who is supposed to be extinct, but no one pays any attention to his lecturing. Finally driven to a state of sullen moping, Reginald sits and pouts. Edwina, ever the good and friendly dino, tries to help him by sitting and listening intently to Reginald’s very long and detailed explanation. And when Reginald has finished talking, Edwina gleefully skips out of the classroom to go make cookies. The final line of the story tells you that Edwina understood what Reginald had said but “she just didn’t care.”

Chilling. well, okay, not really chilling. More adorable than anything else, but there is a message in there. There are going to be times when there is no value to correctly a matter of fact. You can champion reason and knowledge, but you’ll break your brain if you argue over every trivial point of order. Yes, Edwina is a dinosaur, and yes that means she should be a fossil in the ground, but the truth of the situation is that she is very much alive and non-extinct. Reginald is only making his own life harder by pedantically trying to convince people of a fact that is not relevant to the circumstances.

It’s a lesson that every intellectual or “smarty pants” has to learn: let some things slide. Some times, the popular perception is too strong to correct with a simple speech. And, above all, if every one is having a nice time while eating cookies and helping each other, it doesn’t matter who is extinct. And I speak from experience for you see, I have been that “smarty pants”. I have been Reginald Von Hoobie-Doobie.

I’m in the middle of a bout of insomnia, conveniently timed to mess up a good chunk of my weekend plans. To be accurate, it’s kind of a family affair. None of us have slept well in the last few nights, between the after-effects of a growth spurt, actual insomnia, snoring, stress, etc, etc…It would be great if one of us got ahead of the game and could be the cheery, well-rested example to the other two, but instead we’re a bunch of tired and grumpy gusses.

Since I’ve been effectively sidelined by stupefying fatigue, I’ve had a lot of time to think about the possible cause of my light sleeping/ sleeplessness. There has to be a physical component to it, and that part has me stumped. Unless someone mischievously switched our decaf coffee for full octane java, there’s no excess of chemical stimulus that could be causing it. And I haven’t made any sudden changes to my sleep routine.  So, let’s leave the physical part aside and focus on the circus in my head.

For possibly the first time in my life, I have a large list of activities and plans that I want to work on. I’m 2 chapters away from finishing the first edit o an old book I had sitting around. I’m working with one of my fantastic friends to get an interview with me on a major nerd website, which will give my book an amazing amount of exposure. I’m going to deliver some copies of my book to a local book store, so that people I don’t know could conceivably buy a copy. I’ve got a stack of politically-related tasks that I want to get done. And, I’m considering joining my condo board. With all of these things whirring around in my head, I’ve forgotten how to stop thinking about it and relax. I’ve never been this enthused about a bunch of things at the same time.I complained to the wife last week that I was missing a good, regular, brainless activity that would give me time to relax and be dumb with my friends. We used to have games nights, but the interest waned and no one really wanted to commit to getting together.

This leaves me with a lot of intellectually intensive things that are pre-occupying my mind, and no pressure release to get me ready for bed. Hence, my insomnia. It is a strange and terrible situation when you are lying wide awake in your bed at 3AM, writing your nomination speech. It feels like I’m getting the short of the stick, my brain punishing me because I’m starting to realize my potential. The ill effects of sleep deprivation feel a lot like a hangover, but I didn’t earn a hangover. I’ve been good, I’ve been involved, I’ve been physically active, I’ve been a good dad. Give me some slack, brain!

(as an aside, it looks like one of the search terms that led readers to my blog this week was “definition of utter ego”. Thanks for calling me egotistical, internet.)

I don’t know if you feel the same way, but I have a tremendously powerful aversion to failure. Despite my belief in the learning opportunities brought on by trying and failing, I still clench up occasionally in the face of a challenge. It’s becoming easier to just step forward and take a chance, but it’s still an up-hill battle some days. I’ve been going toe to toe with just such a situation recently, after I volunteered for the vp of communications role in my local political organization.It turns out, they haven’t had a communications guy for…well no one is really sure, but it’s a long time. So, I’m going into the role with no real guidance or previous documentation to crib from. On top of that, the organization is generally disorganized and low on energy (being third place in a bunch of elections will do that to a group).  On the other hand, I’m raring to go. I have 8 hours a day to plot and scheme while building sand castles with the little dude. I am chock full of ideas and motivation. This leads to the challenge: I can either sit and wait and get approval for every step I want to take, even though that approval may take weeks (communication between executive members is also a problem), or I can try my best to follow the rules I can find, and just go for it. Will I end up breaking some rules/duplicating effort/cheesing people off? Oh, probably. But if it’s a choice between doing nothing and being bored, or jumping in and taking some flack if it goes wrong, well, might as well jump.

In mostly unrelated news, I had a chance to chat with another parent of a clever 3-year-old at a barbecue this week. When she was talking about her daughter and the idea of having any other children she said “it would feel like gambling, and I’ve already hit the jackpot”. Exactly. My little dude is so entertaining, so clever, so wonderfully perplexing, and so full of potential, that I want to devote all of my energy and time to helping him become the amazing adult he’s going to be. Also, I’m almost sleeping all the way through the night again, and I look forward to that blissful return to grownup sleeping patterns  each and every day.