Sleep

Sleep Deprived

Chris Leave a comment

I no longer sleep because I think of you.

I can sleep no longer
              because I think of you

My weary eyes refuse to shut again
And all my dreams reach fever-pitch
Before I lurch awake
                           clutching sheets
That have tangled me in my sleep

Weary eyes with constant crusts
              forming at the corners
Unblinking and blankly stare
At my desk while I try to work

I speak in stifled yawns to my own hands
As my bleary eyes plod through the day
              and bits of conversation
                             lose all
                                          connection
                                                        and meaning

I speak in stifled yawns and bleary eyes
As I vaguely try to find my notebook
So I can write down each of the replies
I’ll no longer remember tomorrow
No one knows what to make of this
And all I can tell them is it will be fine
              at some point in the future
For now
              I trace big lines on paper
              where I was supposed to write words
And      drift away         until I can leave
To find myself a moor for the evening.

A Little Change Can Go a Long Way

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Last night, I got caught up reading a book. I was already up late because of D&D and remembering to update my blog, but deciding to read for a bit before going to sleep definitely kept me up for another two hours on top of all that. I’m running on about three and a half hours of sleep today. For now, I’m managing alright, despite having spent most of Saturday in a big-group social situation. Weddings are great, but they really wipe me out. Meeting tons of new people and being around that much energy takes a lot of effort for me. If it wasn’t for how wonderfully restful Sunday was (prior to staying up three extra hours, anyway), I’d be dead on my feet.

I don’t regret my decision. Matthew Colville is a wonderful author and I’m excited to review his two books, Priest and Thief. They’re an absolute joy to read so far and I find it incredibly frustrating (in the best way) that the third book is not yet visible on the horizon. The man has been incredibly busy lately, with his usual YouTube video series about running Dungeons and Dragons called “Running the Game” and working on the incredible Kickstarter he ran only a few months ago. Setting up an office and writing a D&D supplement take a lot of work and he’s managed to do them both without dropping any of his other plates, so I am willing to cut him some slack when it comes to working on his book series.

Staying up late can be a lot of fun. As long as I’m staying engaged and enjoying myself, I don’t mind doing it once every so often. It only becomes a problem if I start to make a habit of it and wind up leaning on caffeine to see me through the day. That’s never a healthy habit and it is an easy one for me to fall into since I feel the most awake and alert in the evening and night, no matter how little I’ve slept.

Thankfully, getting better sleep has been easier since I’ve gotten a “new” (owned by a friend, but still in way better condition than my previous mattress) mattress. It is some kind of foam and, while sitting on the edge causes it to sink alarmingly, it does a much better job of supporting my back than my old spring mattress did. My lower back pain is much diminished and might even totally disappear in time and all of my joints feel way better which is a benefit I didn’t expect. Six hours of sleep now feels like eight or more hours of sleep on a good night with my old mattress.

It was amazing to realize just how much my old crappy mattress contributed to the problems in my life. Low-quality sleep, aching joints and muscles, constant lower back pain, and little desire to actually go to sleep all added up to a certain degree of constant irritation or frustration that now seems so clearly tied to my old crappy mattress that I’d been putting off replacing for over a year. Almost a year and a half, actually. I probably would have continued to put it off if it wasn’t for the fact that one of my friends just happened to be moving and my girlfriend made a few comments about how my back pain was clearly tied to my creaky, dented, shitty mattress.

It is amazing how changing one relatively little thing I’d been ignoring for a long time made my life so much better. Even a return to “neutral” in terms of what sleeping did for me was a huge boon. Last week was super stressful and exhausting for a lot of reasons and in a lot of ways. If I’d been sleeping on my old crappy mattress, I’d probably be depressed, exhausted, and on the verge of tears/a panic attack at this point. Instead, I’m tired but ready to go play D&D again. I don’t need another evening of rest before I feel up for tackling another social situation.

That’s not to say I don’t want to rest. I would love to get to sleep early tonight and try for a lovely eight hours. I might actually wind up feeling properly rested if I could do that for a few nights in a row. I haven’t felt properly rested in a long time and it is now so easy to see why. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard to convince myself not to spend money on a new mattress. It was definitely worth what I spent and then some.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what else might be a seemingly insignificant thing that could have a huge impact on the quality of my life. Working out more springs to mind, as does putting more effort into ensuring my diet is well-rounded instead of the “eat food and just make sure it includes fruit and veggies” thing I’m currently doing. Neither of those are really insignificant, though. They’d both take a fair amount of discipline and effort every day, but the potential benefits should outweigh the costs. Back when I was more active in regards to maintaining my physical health, I felt better than I have since I stopped. Combining that with the benefit of a non-shitty mattress could have an incredible positive impact on my life. Likely will have. Should have. I don’t really know and I won’t until I try it out.

I’m going to keep thinking of more things I can try as well. I’m still trying to fit all the puzzle pieces from the past two weeks of meditation together, so something else to focus on for a bit should help me wrangle everything into place. We’ll see. I feel like I say that a lot. It’s kind of exciting to know that there’s the potential for so much positive change, but also kind of scary. Thing could wind up being incredibly different and, while I one-hundred-percent support myself getting into better physical and mental health, I’m not sure I’m ready for all the changes that might entail. Thankfully, I’m not on a schedule.

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For What It’s Worth

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During last night’s reflection, I had a hard time focusing. I spent almost an hour trying to clear my mind and start meditating, but I never quite made it. My roommates were being noisy (which is fine. That’s what excited people do), it was uncomfortably warm in my room, and I was exhausted. Every time I tried to relax and let my mind clear, some random thought would show up and bring a bunch of its friends along. Normally, that’s what I’m looking for, but this was before I could clear my mind so it was all about stuff I’d read that day or the games I’d been playing earlier that evening or the books I was planning to start reading this weekend. None of which is conducive to untangling the knots of my mind.

I took a break to get ready for bed because it was late and taking a bigger break from trying to meditate is better than fruitlessly trying again. A chance to reset, do some mundane tasks, and hopefully give the AC a chance to cool down my room without me in it. While I was preparing for bed, I caught myself feel slightly upset with myself about how the night had gone. Sure, I enjoyed playing video games with my roommate, but the game was less fun than usual because we spent a lot of time doing the same thing over and over again to unlock these quest item things we were given. It was frustrated to see how much work it would take to finish the quest and not to know if it was actually worth it.

I never ate before sitting down to play, so I ate my dinner at 10pm and spent more time than I planned eating and playing a handheld game, so I wound up spending an hour of what should have been my reflection time eating and playing a game. Throw in the general feelings of frustrations and anticipatory stress I’ve got from how busy my next two months are going to be and the fact that my phone call with my girlfriend was nothing but planning out the next few weekends. All together, it left me with a sort of general dissatisfaction that is only possible to feel when everything isn’t a problem now or got you exactly what you needed, but you know it’ll be a problem later or left you with the realization that you didn’t get what you wanted and initially set out to get.

Nothing bad happened, it just wasn’t satisfying. The general dissatisfaction with everything I’d done since leaving work and the specific dissatisfaction I felt at being unable to clear my mind combined into a heavy weight that hung around me neck as I brushed my teeth. It was not pleasant. By the time I was ready for bed and once again trying to clear my mind for a last stab at meditating, the dissatisfaction and disappointment with myself had settled into my mind like a boulder covered in fly paper. It attracted all of the stray thoughts in my head and held onto them, but it was too heavy to clear away so everything got to stick around and buzz angrily in my head.

After a while, though, I realized that I was being unduly hard on myself. The day had been long, I was tired, and I was trying to sort out some plans for this up-coming weekend that were outside of my control. All I could do was ask people things and hope I could make it all work out in a positive way for myself. I’d felt sick after work (which was why I didn’t eat when I got home) and hadn’t even gotten home at my expected time because work is growing increasingly busy. Plus the whole “reflect and don’t do your normal blog posts” thing is throwing my routines out of whack and that always upsets me. I like my routines. They make it easier to control my anxiety and focus on enjoying whatever it is I’m doing.

It was interesting to realize and really think about how much of my sense of self-worth is tied to daily accomplishments. It isn’t just “am I making progress on my goals?” that’s getting me down on myself. I’m asking myself “did I make progress on my goals TODAY?” and that’s a pretty unforgiving line of questioning. In the past, a lot of my focus on making this more healthy (or at least less unhealthy) has been centered around what I define as “progress.” Doing things like considering resting up after a busy few weeks or taking the time away from working to refresh my mind by reading something new as progress instead of just the quantifiable, measurable “more words written/things done.” What I probably should be doing is working on addressing why I lose self-value when I don’t make immediate progress.

Not that I shouldn’t continue redefining “progress” while I’m at it. Doing these blog posts and meditating during what is normally my writing time is the opposite of what I’d consider progress, but it’s going to help me in the long run by making it easier for me to write. At the very least, I should have more mental energy for writing if I’m not trying to make my way through or around my current mental knot.

This whole “self-value” thought process wound up being very productive. Apparently, I value other people at a minimum level based on the fact that they are a Human and all Humans are worth a certain amount of respect because they’re Humans. However, I don’t extend this value to myself when it comes to considering my own value. I know the reasoning behind that (or lack thereof) is tied up in a lot of the issues I’m working through, but I know one of my defenses against self-destructive thoughts was to always have something that I was doing that I felt must go on. These days, I don’t need that defense any longer, but I seem pretty stuck with the instinctive need for some life-affirming task.

I used to write almost every day when I was in high school. I dropped off a bit during college, but my senior year and the year after college saw me writing so much that I’m pretty sure I wrote more during those two years than in all the rest of the years of my life put together, excluding the one that started November 1st, 2017. These past seven months of writing would put my current record-holding years to shame. I’m writing an average of 1000 words a day and I’m pretty sure I’ll pass my two-year record sometime in July. If I go add up all my words, anyway.

That’s a huge deal. It may not be my record-setting days from crunches like NaNoWriMo or previous vacations where I’d write 8000-12000 words a day, but it shows more growth and consistency than I’ve ever seen in my own writing habits. That’s worth a lot, since I know a lot of writers who struggle to be able to write this much overall, let alone write every single day. By the end of the year, I’ll have written enough words to have written the entirety of the Lord of the Rings. That’s a lot.

And, honestly, I’m a human being worth at least as much as a human being is. This isn’t about accepting myself or letting myself off the hook as much as I’d let other people off the hook, this is about valuing my thoughts, opinions, and contribution to being human as much as I value everyone else’s. If I can do that, maybe I can go to sleep early some night instead of trying to cram in as much as possible before I crash. That was another thing that came out of last night. I need more sleep. After meditating for a while on the ways I assigned value to myself, I woke up at 4am with a crick in my neck, drool on my shirt, and numb legs. It took a lot of effort to haul myself into bed for the last two hours of my night. Maybe tonight, I’ll actually go to bed early because I’ll remind myself that my value is the same as everyone else’s, even if I go to bed before I strictly NEED to.

Dreams

Chris 1 Comment

My dreams are a dark unknown abyss
That always deny me restful bliss
As I try to sleep and only miss
Each and every attempt to end this
String of nights forever gone amiss.

My dreams often lose their frightful sheen
When they are so few and far between
I forget the horror I have seen
And eagerly await the next scene
Of whatever story I am keen
To introduce into my routine.

My dreams aren’t sweet, ephemeral things
Tied to secret hopes by hidden strings
But scaly monsters replete with wings
Moving in silence so loud it rings.

My dreams have no blood and guts and gore,
They have something even worse in store
As I toil through my nightly chore
Of knocking on the dark, horrid doors
Of my mind to find what it fears more
Than any monster to wash ashore.

Moments of Quiet

Chris 2 Comments

It is these moments of quiet,
As my brain creeps toward sleep,
That keep me up at night.

The time before is calm and soft:
Full of lingering traces of all
I have accomplished that day
And everything I desire to do
When I wake on a brand new day.

The time after is strange and quick:
Full of half dreams lost to me
As soon as their story has ended
And small movements that feel fast
As my body begins to slumber.

During, though, there is only silence.
I am left with the darkness of my room
Mirroring a darkness inside of me
I can only manage to drive away
With things that would keep me from sleeping.

During these moments of quiet,
I am the captive audience of my fears
And every single thing that went wrong
During any day I can remember
Plus a few more I had once forgotten.

It is no wonder I do not sleep well
When I cannot bypass these moments
Without crashing from awake to asleep.

My Dream Car

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Lee stood at the window, folding laundry as he waited for his girlfriend. As he moved deeper into a pile of shirts, he saw a car pull up. A moment of excitement, the car pulled away and he remembered Amy was still too far away.

He took a pile of shirts and put them away. When Lee turned around, he noticed a car pull up to the curb, pause for a moment, and then drive away. Curious, he absently picked up another shirts and kept folding. On the fifth, the car pulled up to the curb, hesitated for a moment, and then drove off again.

Gone were thoughts of shirts and his girlfriend. Lee tossed his laundry aside and moved to the downstairs window. A couple minutes later, the car pulled up to the curb, hesitated, and then drove away.

While he contemplated this pattern, it came by again. The interval between the car’s disappeared and reappearance began to shrink until it came into sight as soon as it vanished. After a minute, he noticed the car creeping closer to his window. He jumped back from the window. He couldn’t see the car past the blinds in any of the windows, but he could hear it zipping around.

Just as it sounded like it was about to tear his house apart, he found himself sitting on his bed next to a pile of laundry, phone buzzing in his pocket. Still listening for the rush of air that was the car, he saw his girlfriend’s picture.

“Hello?”

“I’m outside.”

“Sorry.” Lee hurried toward the door. “I dozed off.”

“Really?” Lee unlocked the door and hung up his phone. Amy’s worried face greeted his.“It looks like a bunch of cars drove over your lawn. How could you have slept through that?”

NaNoWriMo Day 14 (11/14)

Chris Leave a comment

Well, I wound up only spending 2.5 to 3 hours writing last night instead of the 5+ I had planned, but I got over 2000 words written, so I’ve finally started to make up for lost time. If I turn my 1666 daily words into about 2400 daily words, I will still finish in time. Heck, if I count the words I’ve written for this blog, I’ll only be short by 2044 at the end of this post. I’ll be using the day 13 total since I usually write these posts around midnight and schedule them to post in the morning so I’ve got the chance to review them before they go up. This is relevant because I count any time before going to bed as still the previous day for the purposes of calculating numbers and statistics.

I finally feel like I’m at least sort of back on track now. I’ve righted the course by spending my evening trying to write (even if I missed the mark for the majority of the time I had set aside). That being said, I almost fell asleep while writing because my caffeine wore out around 11pm and my ibuprofen (I’ve developed some really awful neck tension and pain) wore off at about 11:30pm, so the last bit was a real struggle to stay focused on writing sensibly. I kept almost mixing in references to things from Star Wars, Rick and Morty, and The Oatmeal comics because that’s apparently where my mind goes when I’m stimulating my imagination while falling asleep.

I seriously wrote two entire sentences about how many schmeckles a job would earn before I realized my eyes were closed and schmeckles are a currency from a particular episode from Season 1 of Rick and Morty (the Meeseeks episode). I definitely enjoy the show (Mostly. There are some parts I don’t enjoy because I feel like it crossed a line simply for the sake of transgressing rather than trying to make a statement about anything), but I wouldn’t want it injected into the story I’m working on. It’s entirely the wrong kind of story. This story is… just Fiction, I guess? YA but for adults? I’m having a hard time classifying it, honestly. Its like The Great Gatsby but about 20-somethings in the modern age and our particular brand of existential crisis/identity issues (which, depending on your analysis, makes it fairly similar to The Great Gatsby).

I’m willing to bet that, once I go through what I wrote tonight while in a more cognizant state of mind, I’ll find a whole bunch of stuff that doesn’t make sense or just kind of repeats itself. That’s usually what happens when I’m falling asleep and still trying to write (thank goodness I’m still allowed to edit…).

I’m going to be mostly busy tonight, but I should have time to cram some writing in if I work at it and focus well. Then Wednesday night is weekly night for Destiny 2 and Thursday is… probably a Skype call with a friend. And writing where I can fit it. Same for Wednesday. I can probably put off Destiny until 6 or 7 and write between the end of work and the start of our weekly play time. I’ll figure it out. I’m officially in “shut up and make it work” mode, so I’m confident the daily writing will get done.

One last gripe: as much as I love f.lux, I really hate that it notifies you of approaching wake-up times. Yes, I know I get up at 6am every morning, but I find it distinctly unhelpful to get a pop-up notification that my wake-up time is in 5 hours.

 

Daily Prompt

Everyone’s relationship with music is different. We all have different preferences for the kind of music we listen to, but we also have different views on what music is appropriate where. Today, write a scene about your character’s musical preferences and how they encounter music in their lives (for instance, I like chill and meander-y music because I often use it to help me relax when I’m tense or stressed). Feel free to expand into the Musician vs Listener territory, and how being either of those changes the relationship and how music is encountered.

 

Sharing Inspiration

Today’s inspiration is actually my go-to writing beverage. No alcohol or coffee for me. Sure, I’ll have an energy drink if I’m feeling particularly drained, but that’s more a pre-writing thing than something I enjoy consuming while writing. My favorite thing to drink is Tradewinds iced tea. It comes in giant jugs at the grocery store and is made of pure tea for the unsweetened variants and sugar for all the sweet variants, instead of high-fructose corn syrup. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with corn syrup (there’s a lot of anecdotes and hearsay, but little scientific evidence that I’ve encountered, so feel free to let me know if I’m wrong), I just prefer the taste and texture of drinks make with sugar instead of corn syrup. It saves me a lot of time because I don’t need to brew it or mix it and a nice cool beverage keeps me alert and focused more than a warm beverage does. Find your drink of choice and make sure you’ll well supplied!

 

Helpful Tips

If you’re stuck at a point and not sure how to proceed, I recommend talking out loud to yourself or a stuffed animal (or action figure or pet or whatever, something with a face.) Sure, an actual person could give you a response instead of just passively looking at you, but sometimes we’re not entirely ready for our work to be seen (or heard) by actual people. You get a lot of the same benefits, but without the anxiety that often goes with sharing your creativity with the people around you. Just sit down, talk about the problem, follow your trains of thought from beginning to end, and you’d be surprised at just how many details work themselves out once they’re off the page and in the air.