Everyone is crazy but me! I’ve been known to use that line but it's always been a joke. Now I'm starting to wonder.

I'm really tired of all the sleepless nights – no pun intended. Tossing and turning, turning and tossing, ugh, who needs to sleep anyways? It's easier to turn on the computer than to talk myself into a slumber.

I've reached a point in my life where my most frequent self-description is “apathetic.” I used to be pretty evangelical about…well just about everything. I had all sorts of opinions that I was overeager to share. But now - now it's a different story.

About a month ago, I went out to dinner with a bunch of family. I was sitting next to my uncle, a Commander in the US Navy turned aerospace engineer, whom I don't see but every few years. He considers himself a conservative free market man. He recently attended some educational seminar where they had read and discussed, among other things, Bastiat's “What is Seen and What is not Seen.” After he and I shared a brief discussion of Bastiat, he took a little more serious tone.

“What is this I hear about you being way out on the far left?” he asked.

My younger brother overheard, gave a good laugh and busted out “Joel on the far left? Not quite.”

“Well” said my uncle, “I hear that you are an anarchist.”

“Yes” said I, “that is true.”

I could see the wheels turning as this proud patriotic military man tried to bend his mind around this new information. I knew that he was searching for the right words but all that came out was a sort of grunted “Wha?”

Someone, I couldn't tell who, added “So does that mean you're left wing or right wing?”

The look in my uncle's eyes confirmed that this was his question too. So I answered him, “Look, I'm not left or right. I'm nothing. It's like I've reached political nirvana. I'm just hanging out in some void. I don't care for politics and I don't want to play anybody's silly games. I just want to live my life.”

Luckily, right then, my mom in her infinite wisdom chimed in with something totally unrelated and successfully changed the subject. I could not have been happier to oblige. I really didn't want to talk about it, nor did I want to talk about any of the potential spin off topics. I didn't want to discuss the war in Iraq, the war on drugs, torture, wire tapping, burdensome economic intervention, private roads, private defense, intellectual property or whatever. I just don't give a shit enough to care anymore and I especially don't care enough to “cast [my] pearls before swine.”

At least that's what I tell myself when I'm awake. In the middle of the night it's a different story.

Most people would consider my insomnia a disease but I look at it as a sign of my health. It shows that I do still care. All of the bullshit is still getting under my skin. I'm not entirely apathetic. When I can't sleep I know that I am still in touch with reality, that I still have my humanity and that I still have my very own conscience.

I guess I just can't nod off all comfy and cozy in my bed while knowing that innocent Iraqis are being killed by the bombs, bullets and violence that have been imported by the American Empire and it's allies. I find it especially hard to sleep when, in my nightmares, the faces of Iraq children become the faces of my own.

I can't help but think of the money and resources being drained away from productive individuals and funneled into the pockets of the wasteful, lazy and corrupt. I wonder about the extent of the damage and whether it will, someday, cause me to struggle unnecessarily to feed my children or if they will have to struggle unnecessarily to feed theirs.

I worry that the future may hold in store a wonderfully dystopian tyranny. Will my progeny not even know the meager freedoms that I possess today? Often, in my sleepless state, I get myself up and make my way to the bed of each one of my children where I can joyfully watch them sleep in peace and innocence. I can only hope for the best in their future.

As I count my sheep, I ponder upon the psychosis of many of my friends, family and neighbors who have all but turned in their sanity. Like kidnap victims with Stockholm syndrome, I watch them embrace and defend their captors, their exploiters. I listen as they faithfully recite every lie, as they repeat every piece of propaganda. There goes individuality; there goes reality right down the memory hole. Trade it in for a collective identity; trade it in for officially sanctioned truth. And then, at the end of each day, like the good sheep running through my head, they lay themselves down with a clear conscience and a false sense of security and they enjoy a good night's rest.

In the end, I know that I should let it go. I know that my sleepless worries aren't going to change a damn thing but I am thankful that, for me, letting go is not so easy. I am grateful that when I am unfortunate enough to fall asleep, it is my conscience, it is my nightmares that return me to my healthy state of insomnia.