Tag Archives: Sleep

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?

The Redemption of Erâth: Hiatus

Dear readers,

At the beginning of the year, I began work on the second book of The Redemption of Erâth, Exile. My intention was to follow the pattern I set last year of writing a new chapter each week – thus completing the book in about 25 weeks.

It’s now the 9th week of the year, and I’ve written 5 chapters. There are several things that have gotten in the way of this goal. For one, the chapters have become inherently longer (some as much as 150%), which takes more time to write. There have been a number of events in the past couple of months that have taken time away from my writing as well.

However, the most important reason I need to slow down is for my own health. Since I started looking into sleep disorders and had a polysomnography done, I’ve realized that my perpetual exhaustion may be more than just “the way I am.” My UP band (which has been simply wonderful) has helped me to realize that I am sometimes getting as little as 5 hours of sleep a night, which for me is not nearly enough. I am now consistently dozing off whilst driving to and from work, and I am going to have a serious accident if I’m not able to keep my focus on the road.

So in all of this, something has to give. My typical day starts at 6:00 AM, and I don’t have a chance to sit down and write until about 9:30 PM at the earliest. In the past, I would spend until midnight writing before going to bed, under the assumption that I’d be getting my minimum of 6 hours of sleep.

I was talking about this with a colleague at work, and I mentioned that if I went to bed earlier, I wouldn’t be able to get as much writing done. In her infinite wisdom, she pointed out that I wouldn’t get much writing done from a coffin either. It’s a fair point.

So for the immediate future, I will be slowing the progress on Exile so that I can focus on my health, and hopefully get an extra hour of sleep or so each night. I will still write on my days off, and if I happen to have an early evening, I’ll be working then, too. I want to apologize, because I feel equally anxious to find out what’s going to happen to Brandyé next. For now, though, the next part of his story will have to come more slowly.

I appreciate your readership, your support, your kindness and your patience. We will get there – and find out exactly what’s going to happen to the world of Erâth!

With the deepest affection,

 

Satis

Sleep