"Braaaains...must...eat...brains..." (vampires, zombies, and howling at the moon...)

I'm trying desperately to correct the vampiric sleep cycle I seem to be stuck in at the moment.

However, despite hitting the sack as early as 9.45pm I just can't seem to sleep. I read somewhere that the worst thing one can do is just lay there in bed, staring at the ceiling, getting gradually more pissed off, so I've got up. I've had some 'nights' when I've still been awake as late as four or five o'clock in the morning, though for the last nights it's only been circa 2am. I guess I'm slowly getting there, and in this most recent bout of insomnia I have, at least, been able to take in some of the local wildlife.

I saw a skunk briefly for the first time in Canada the other night, though it moved so quickly the only real part of it I saw was the tail. Black and white stripes though? Gotta be a skunk. I also had the chance to see a couple of raccoons working the neighbourhood which was quite cool. I'm fascinated by the way they move.

So it was circa 3.30am and I was slumped on a chair on the porch smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of milk when the two of them appeared in the gardens opposite. They move like soldiers or, more specifically, snipers. Both would move to cover under a bush or similar and disappear from view. Then one would sneak further down the road across the front gardens to find the next cover. Once safely ensconced, the second one moved up behind it, overtook the first one, and then sought the next cover. It reminded me of the way I used to move my SAS team around in "Conflict: Desert Storm". One has to admit it's fascinating, and quite cool, even if you're one of those people who's woken up on garbage day to find the contents of their green bin scattered across the front lawn.

Anyway, regardless of how chuffed I am to have seen my first raccoons in action, it's important to keep fighting the sleep cycle because of the ill effects the next day. Right now I'm blogging through bleary eyes, still in my pyjamas, and it's 12:04pm. "Well, that sounds like a nice lie-in," you might be thinking, but the trouble is that I have no control over it. Once I've slept through my alarm then it's a bit of a lottery as to when I will wake up. Sometimes it's as early as 10.30am. Other times it's been four or five o'clock in the afternoon. Every now and then I lose an entire day, waking up so late in the evening the next day that it's time to go to bed again. I've missed shrink appointments, group therapy, dentist appointments and various other things this way. Worse still, it's hugely de-motivating. If I'm already a little depressed, then my train of thought goes something like this:

"Uh...I'm awake...it's bright in my room, I wonder what time it is? Shit! Noon already? Fuck! I've wasted half the day already. I'm useless - totally disorganised and a complete slob with all the self discipline of one of those cute grandparents who keeps forgetting people's names and slipping whisky into their cups of tea. What's the point. I'm not going to achieve anything today now, it's too late. I may as well just go back to sleep."

It's called all-or-nothing thinking, and is a common symptom though I can't remember whether it's anxiety-related or depression-related. One tends to think of things in black or white but never grey. There are no shades, no variations, no compromise. Either I've succeeded, or I've utterly failed and am a complete waste of space. Even knowing it's a symptom doesn't help sometimes. It should do - I'm not stupid, and the whole reason for spending so much time familiarising myself with my disorders through extensive research was the hope that if I knew when I was 'doing it', I could stop and say, "No, that's not me, that's the disorder talking," and rethink things. Sometimes though it's just too strong, too overpowering. Don't forget it's often accompanied by a feeling of physical fatigue, of being barely strong enough to lift my feet to walk. There's been times in the past few weeks when I've felt like a zombie, walking around in a dazed, barely conscious state. I guess that's to be expected after a fitful sleep.

Anyway, after last week's Spanish Inquisition at group I wasn't much looking forward to yesterday. Just to cap it all, despite checking the clock on my mobile phone obsessively for the first two hours I was sat in the internet cafe near Yonge & Bloor, I still managed to miss the crucial time when I would need to leave and make it to group promptly. I suddenly realised I'd become completely absorbed in what I was doing, grabbed my phone, and...5.23pm.

Bollocks. Group starts at 5.30pm. Cue frantic scampering out of there and onto the subway. I'm not sure what time I did make it to the 17th floor of St. Michael's but thankfully it must have been soon enough for me to not take any flak. However, group turned out to be pretty darned rough anyway. I managed to cower in the corner for the first 45 minutes or so but the facilitators have an uncanny knack of spotting who's hiding something. It's probably easy with me, I don't have a poker face per se, and I'm not a very good liar so I rarely bother. I ended up going through everything I'd been feeling when writing the suicidal blog entries from a few days ago, and ended up crying like a wuss in front of everyone, which just kills me.

One very important thing came out of it all though.

Other group members were focussing on my need for work and the income it brings. It wasn't the first time I'd heard the suggestion that I should take whatever job I could get. Even my folks have said the same. However, as I explained, the potentially serious result of taking a job where every sentence is completed with the words, "Would you like fries with that?" is the effect on my self esteem. 2007 was bad enough, being part of the senior management team of the PR arm of a global advertising agency. On paper, the DDB PR job wasn't even a bad one, but after being consistently snubbed by the boss in favour of her favourite freelancer, having to fight against the advertising people on my account teams who insisted on giving our clients bad, ill-conceived, ignorant, PR counsel without even liaising with any of the PR pros on the team, and the various staff collapsing with exhaustion or stress inside the PR team it started to get me down.

We had serious, serious problems. The budgeting on accounts was so out of whack that account managers were having to rob one client in order to fund another. Some projects had gone so waaaay over budget that we were working for free. At the end of 2007 I calculated the staff turnover rate out of curiosity. It was over 90 per cent, and we were losing one member of staff - on average - every six weeks, along with all the client knowledge and media sector expertise they had because there was never, never a proper handover process. My wife at the time is a PR pro too, and used to stand stunned, agog, eyes wide and mouth open when I used to tell her about the things that went on behind closed doors there. Having junior staff come to me in private and in tears because they were so terrified to submit their timesheets and incur the spiteful, misguided wrath of the boss put me over the edge. Some of these people I'd played a role in bringing into DDB PR, and I felt more than partially responsible for their misery. I ceased being able to sleep at night, and could barely look myself in the mirror. In the mornings I'd wake up feeling cheerful, and then have an insipid, unstoppable dread creep over me that left a bitter taste in my mouth, along with the thought, "I have to go back in there again today." Sunday nights were miserable.

The way DDB PR was run at the time was in direct conflict to my ethics. Clients were deceived, staff were run into the ground like slaves, and the advertising team made everything worse by backing the client when the PR people were trying to explain why using an advertising copywriter to fill news releases full of meaningless bullshit would alienate the client's entire target media list, for good...every journalist on every publication would receive the pushing-the-envelope, squaring-the-circle, synergistic, soup-to-nuts drivel, think, "What is this shit?" and delete it. Then there was the long-term damage to the PR people on the account who would have their entire network of media contacts potentially turn against them for pushing such shit on them. And the boss of the PR team sat back and let it all happen.

Even though I've been safely out of DDB PR for a year now, the memories are so vivid they still haunt me. And that's what comes into my mind when I think of taking a job that comprises having my name on a badge on my left pec. That feeling of, "Oh no, not again, why do I have to do it again". With a menial job though, a great deal of the problem is shame. The stomach-churning fear that someone I know, an old boss, my ex-wife would happen to stroll into wherever I was working and see me.

Until yesterday, that is.

The penny that dropped was the realisation that such a job ought only to be a stepping stone. Strictly temporary. If I was lucky, I might be in and out within a month or two. Last night the realisation sunk in that all the time I'd considered and chosen to ignore such opportunities was because I was perceiving them as careers. I wasn't thinking about serving coffee in Tim Horton's, I was thinking about having to serve coffee in Tim Horton's for the rest of my miserable life.

It gives me hope, which is a rare thing indeed these days.