Category Archives: Thought of the Week

Once-weekly posts on whatever nonsense crosses my mind.

Thought of the Week: Twice in a Row? Never.

blogger11Just last week I mentioned that I’d received a Beautiful Blogger award from the delightful Factorymaid.

What are the odds – honestly, what on earth are the odds – that this week I’d receive the Very Inspiring Blogger award?

Yet that’s exactly what happened, thanks to Saronai. She said she likes my photos (hee hee), and apparently I write some thoughtful articles. I’m not sure which one she found thoughtful (or which one was inspiring – if you find out, let me know), but I feel honored nonetheless to think that I could be having such an impact on someone else out there. That’s always a fuzzy feeling (fuzzy; imagine that coming from me).

Newly followed, but he shares a lot of beautiful photos and some thoughtful articles as well.

So it seems I am once more pressed to relate seven interesting things about myself, so that you can all get a few more laughs at my expense. I will again remind everyone that I don’t participate in the final requirement of these awards (nominate further bloggers) because there are far too many deserving people out there. My personal inspirations, as always, are listed at the bottom of every post under Discover Others.

So here goes:

  1. A Lego insect is staring at me.
  2. I have never read A Tale of Two Cities. I don’t know why, and I feel bad about it.
  3. Paper is my enemy. It surrounds me, and threatens me.
  4. A-flat is my favorite note (but not G-sharp).
  5. There are 25 Stephen King novels on my bookshelf. I really need to get more.
  6. I nearly died skiing off-piste when I was about twelve. My ski got caught in a snow bank and came off, and slide down the slope toward a sixty-foot cliff. I caught a rock about three feet from the edge. The terror was nothing compared to what I felt when Little Satis was born.
  7. My wife is one of the most amazing and amazingly infuriating people I’ve ever known. She deserves better than me and I am reminded of this every day, and am grateful. Even if I don’t show it.

Satis Logo with ©

Thought of the Week: The Second Person to Ever Call Me Beautiful

beautiful-blogger-awardWell, after so many years of looking in the mirror, I knew someone would eventually.

There’s a rather wonderful person called Factorymaid who has been following me for a little while now, and I ashamedly had not really even paid attention. No Freshly Pressed excuses; it’s just plain rude. (To everyone else I also haven’t checked out yet, I’m sorry too!)

Factorymaid, as it turns out, is (by her account, anyway) a brilliantly smart and successful person with a lot of hurt underneath and insecurities in the background. I read a few of the chapters of a book she’s working on, and they’re gut-wrenching. I’ll leave the rest of her tale up to her, but I’m rather glad she did this, because now I know someone new in the world whose acquaintance I’d be sorry to have missed.

Factorymaid believes I’m worthy of the Beautiful Blogger award. It does make me wonder: is it the blog or the blogger that’s beautiful? (Well, there’s no doubt about the blogger, of course – the dashing hunk of manliness.) I do try to infuse the world with something less than ugliness, though I’ll admit that words sometimes get a little twisted on the way, but I am the kind of person who prefers to see beauty in things others might not consider. To me, the only things ugly are those that are thoughtless.

Factorymaid certainly isn’t thoughtless.

Anyway, as usual I will obey the commandments of the award with my own stipulations. I won’t put any new blogs down here – there are far too many excellent and deserving people out there. Those that I’ve formed a special connection with are listed at the bottom of every post; it would, of course, be wonderful to check them out. (Factorymaid, you might be going down there.)

I will, however, attempt to entertain you with seven (7) interesting things about myself:

  1. I recently discovered I’ve been averaging 4-5 hours of sleep a night. It turned out I was tired a lot.
  2. Because of this, I drink a lot of coffee. My wife recently got me a mug that says, “Coffee makes me poop a lot.”
  3. It’s true.
  4. I can headbang in seven different languages.
  5. I have four computers in my room. Three don’t work; hence the fourth.
  6. My son now knows his multiplication tables better than I do.
  7. Sometimes, when no one’s looking, I sneak a cookie from the jar on the top shelf.

Thought of the Week: Not Writing

pen-and-paper

I had quite a hard time thinking about what to write this week, so I thought I’d write about not writing instead.

I have now not written for The Redemption of Erâth for two weeks, which is not something I feel happy about. I have not written a movie night post in the same period of time, though we watched Hogfather recently and very, very much enjoyed it. I very nearly did not write this post tonight.

The truth is, I’ve been in a bit of a bad place for the past few weeks. Some nights I didn’t want to go to bed, because I didn’t want to wake up the next morning. I’ve eaten far too many bowls of Cheerios, too, and even forgot to brush my teeth one night. I had two glasses of wine and a finger of rum a few days ago, and wow – my sleep pattern was all kinds of messed up.

Completely psychotic sleep.

Completely psychotic sleep.

In fact, sleep has been one of the things getting me down. I’m not going to debate cause and effect, but ever since I got my UP band and was able to track my sleep patterns, I’ve felt worse – more tired, less energy – than ever before. Some nights I’ve had as few as 5 hours of sleep, despite being in bed for almost 7 hours. The weird thing is that I usually fall asleep quickly, but wake up often through the night. Sometimes I actually think the band is just picking up my violent thrashing and bashing and thinking I’m awake, but I suppose the result is the same either way; if I’m active enough to seem awake, I might as well be awake for all the rest I’m getting.

It ends up being very hard to write when you question doing anything at all.

Like gods of the sunI’m playing through every My Dying Bride album in the car – one album each day – in an effort to match my mood (damn, their music is good bad mood music). I actually did pretty well tonight; Like Gods of the Sun kept me going until I got home, and I didn’t really fall asleep at the wheel either. I’ve been experimenting with music and sleep, as well; I usually listen to music through earphones in bed as I doze off, since for as long as I can remember it was always a way to soothe myself to sleep. It turns out, thanks to my UP band, that listening to music actually delays my sleep, especially since I eventually wake up to pause the music and take the earphones out. That sucks, because I really, really miss listening to music as I go to sleep.

It ends up being very hard to write when you get to the point of questioning the value of doing anything at all. By the time 10:00 PM rolls around all I want to do is crawl into bed, which of course gives me no writing time at all. I miss Brandyé, and thought I want to know where he’s going next, I just can’t bring myself to go back to him. I worry about this, because I know that the longer I leave the story alone, the harder it will be to get back to it.

The funny thing is that cutting back on writing to focus on sleep hasn’t made me feel better; all it’s really highlighted to me is that I really suck at getting enough sleep. I’m still waiting for the ‘official’ results from my polysomnography, but until then it’s sweet dreams with a rubber ring on my wrist.

At least I got this out – that’s a start! Thanks for bearing with me, guys; I’ll be back in full soon. Trust me?