You’ve already lost by looking at the clock. Light sleep. Wake up, look at the alarm clock and know: Now I have to fall asleep again, otherwise I’ll miss it! What a day this is supposed to be! As a result, of course, there is no more sleep at all. You stagger through the day like the boxer Axel Schulz in round twelve, completely bleary-eyed and overall in a condition in which you are hardly able to put on your underpants without accident.

And sharing eye color with an albino rabbit is no fun either. A little sleep is necessary.

Unfortunately, I’m really missing it here in Australia right now. Eighteen night shifts in a row combined with a ten-hour time difference aren’t really good for your biorhythm.

Then when you get home at five in the morning, you need to rest to get at least six hours of recovery. In the accommodation, on the other hand, new surprises regularly await. A loud garbage truck opposite. Loud and outgoing cleaning staff suddenly standing in the bedroom like a swat team. A giant pool pump right across from my room that’s so loud it’s like someone sticking a vacuum hose to your ear all the time.

My name is Mickey Beisenherz. In Castrop-Rauxel I am a world star. Elsewhere I have to pay for everything myself. I’m a multimedia (single) general store. Author (Extra3, Jungle Camp), presenter (ZDF, NDR, ProSieben, ntv), podcast host (“Apocalypse and Filter Coffee”), occasional cartoonist. There are things that strike me. Sometimes even upset me. And since the impulse control is constantly jammed, they probably have to get out. My religious symbol is the crosshair. The razor blade is my dance floor. And just now it itches in the feet again.

Sleep deprivation is torture. You are no longer fully in control of your senses, your sanity is limited, your coordination suffers. After eight beers, I was mentally a lot stronger than I was these days. Meanwhile I think of the unfortunate hamsters that are given to little children. They have to rummage around in excelsior for amusement or run in their funny rodent peloton, the wheel. That looks funny, but it’s pure torture for the little guys, because the critters are nocturnal and should actually rest during the day. So it’s no wonder that the furry friend is only two years old. Otherwise he might have the life expectancy of a Galapagos tortoise.

The insomniac existence is brutal. I get up – and I’m exactly as exhausted as I was a few hours ago when I lay down. In the cranial shell, on the other hand, where the brain once was, a cerebral pudding sluggishly sloshes from left and right onto the inner walls.

A situation like that of the unfortunate Habeck, when he admitted in the great documentary by Markus Feldenkirchen, rather tousled, that he only ate his muesli with water because he had forgotten to get milk, hopelessly bleary-eyed. And that’s how you should declare bankruptcy…

Insomnia turns the structured human into a randomly thrown heap of separate parts. In this state of mental derangement, overworked doctors operate on unsuspecting patients. Pig transport drivers end up in the ditch due to nodding off.

How can we actually expect politicians to be sober and objective in not thinking up a gas levy when they had their last restful day in the nineties, after the inauguration of a toad tunnel in their district association. Shouldn’t we be a little softer?

Perhaps Olaf Scholz is not mute and hesitant at all. Maybe he’s just sleeping with his eyes open. I almost got a little jealous. Greetings from the hamster wheel of television entertainment!