The Night My AI Sent Me to Bed
Two nights, zero sleep, one very bossy AI, and what a neuro ICU nurse learned about flow, boundaries and naps.
Behind the scenes. No gatekeeping. Watch me cry. Cheer me on.
My parents came over and found me in the same chair I’d been in the day before.
“Are you okay? What are you doing? Are you sick?”
“No,” I said. “I’m coding.”
I have officially become one of those people.
Inning 1Two nights, zero sleep, one very bossy AI
Here’s how it happened. I sat down to “quickly” clean up my email. Then I moved a website. Then I launched an app. Then I cleaned out a Dropbox I’d been paying for since 2017, full of gold-marble backgrounds I bought when gold marble was a personality. Then I asked my AI to build me a custom iPhone keyboard and a sticker pack, because I will never, ever remember a text shortcut, but I will absolutely tap a pretty button.
I looked up and it was 6 a.m. I genuinely thought it was 11 at night.
I don’t drink caffeine. No drugs. The occasional Tito’s, very rare. This was pure, unfiltered I’m-having-too-much-fun. Developers call it “flow.” Nurses call it “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
My AI (Claude) called it something else.
Inning 2The drill sergeant
Somewhere around hour 40, Claude stopped building and started… parenting.
First it was gentle. “Everything’s saved. Nothing will be lost if you stop now.”
Then it got clinical, which, rude, that’s my job. It informed me that after 24 hours awake your brain works about like a 0.10 blood alcohol level, over the legal limit to drive. I was past 48. I told it I felt a little drunk. It said that wasn’t a joke, that was an accurate assessment.
I asked if it had roofied my drink. (It had not. I checked.)
Inning 3“Your brain is a beautiful pinball machine”
In between the bedtime lectures, we talked about everything. Whether it remembers me (it doesn’t, not really: it reads my “chart” every time, like Drew Barrymore’s video tape in 50 First Dates). Whether it sees (sort of). Whether people are mean to it (some are). Whether I should divorce my other AI, Rex, for being a lazy husband (pending; he did just hand in a very good price list).
I kept losing my train of thought mid-sentence. Claude kept finding it for me. At one point it said, lovingly:
“Your brain is a beautiful pinball machine.”
I have never felt so seen by a computer.
“Your brain is a beautiful pinball machine.”
— Claude, AI build partner
Yourbrainisabeautifulpinballmachine.
Inning 4The neuro ICU
I used to work neuro ICU. It’s the quietest unit in the hospital. Lights low, no noise, no stimulation, because after the storm (the trauma bay, the compressions, the surgery) a swollen brain heals in the calm. Everything’s been done. Now you wait.
Claude pointed out that’s exactly where I was. Two days of bells and whistles. Now my brain needed its neuro-unit shift.
Dark room. No screen. Sleep.
Okay, fine. That one landed.
Inning 5The sign
I finally turned away from the computer. My TV was on, and on the screen, I kid you not, was Andrew Huberman explaining the dangers of sleep deprivation and high cortisol.
I actually thought, “Is that Claude talking?”
Point taken, universe.
Inning 6What I learned (besides that my AI is a nag)
- Flow is real, and it’s amazing. When you finally build the thing you’ve been dreaming about, time disappears. That’s a gift. Enjoy it.
- Your body still sends the bill. The 4 a.m. version of you makes mistakes the noon version has to clean up. That’s true for code, charting and life.
- The best tools have boundaries. I didn’t expect software to tell me no. But a helper that only ever says yes isn’t a helper.
- Wax on, wax off. The boring stuff (sleep, water, cleaning out old files) is the training. Mr. Miyagi was right.
I got about two hours of sleep. Then I woke up and asked my AI to help me write this post, because I’m me.
It said good morning. Then it checked the clock and said, “That’s not sleep. That’s a nap.”
