Category: Insomnia

What is this strange beast called “Sleep”?

Health, Insomnia

Sleep. I haven’t been used to getting much of it the past, well, 10 months or more.

I had insomnia when we got our cat, Rory, and he decided that I needed to be up at ridiculous hours every day (because that’s when I was getting up when we adopted him). So I woke every day between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. with a cat kneading my throat, or licking my face, or just plain sitting on me. It became a part of my daily routine.

I got a lot of writing done in that time. And sewing, drawing, etc. The wee hours became the me hours.

Lately, however, Rory has been waking me up later and later. This morning, I got to sleep in until after 5 a.m.! It was amazing. I had forgotten what I was missing in the past year.

The downside to this development is I will have less time for creative endeavors. I’ll have to find a better time to write/draw/paint/sew/etc. now that Rory has deemed it okay for me to sleep.

Oddly enough, I find myself wondering what to do with myself in the mornings now that I don’t have hours upon hours of free time. I can’t very well start an extensive project when there’s only an hour before I have to get ready for work.

I guess decent sleep is a double-edged sword. Without it, I have time to get things done that otherwise might not get done. With it, I’m left wondering what to do with myself.

Lullaby and Good-Day

Insomnia, NaNoWriMo, Writing

These early mornings are killing me. A Ritalin, more than half a liter of Soda Stream energy drink, and a cup of coffee (that’s right, I resorted to coffee–which I hate) and I’m still sleepy. I even managed to go back to sleep after my initial early a.m. kitteh-in-my-face wake up call.

If they keep up, it will help with my NaNoWriMo next month. I can type in the morning (imagine the crazy things I’ll write at nothing in the morning!) and again in the evening while my husband is in training for work, so I can hopefully get the word count in every day. 1667 words in a day doesn’t sound like much, but as any author knows there are some days when the words just don’t come.

As a “pantser” (someone who doesn’t really outline but instead just writes by the seat of their pants), I honestly don’t really much know where my story’s going. It’s just going…somewhere. I kind of have a general idea of where it’s going to end up, but I’m not certain. Oh, and I have no clue on the middle. That’s just up in the air. So there’s that.

Some people don’t go for that kind of writing, but it actually helped in my first novel. I had an entire chapter that was completely unplanned, but the character decided to show up at the end of the chapter before to “save the day.” I had no clue he was going to do that, but as I was finishing the book he just showed up and it was one of those light bulb moments where I was like “Of course, this is how this part is going to resolve! It makes perfect sense now.”

But now it’s off to get ready for the day job. Adios.

To dream or not to dream

Health, Insomnia

I have decided that, entertaining though they may be at times, having ultra vivid dreams sucks.

There are some nights when I wake up from one of these dreams and I can’t go back to sleep. Not necessarily because said dream was a bad dream per se, but because the dream felt so real that it’s unnerving. I just don’t want to go back to sleep and experience that again.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason I feel so tired all the time. I don’t get proper rest even on a night when I sleep “well.” How can you feel rested when you’ve just lived an entire day in twenty minutes? The mere concept is exhausting.

Some people say you should write down your dreams and use them as story fodder, but who wants to read a story about going shopping for Christmas decorations after a half day at work? Sure, I could turn it into some kind of quirky tale where everything goes wrong. Or maybe an inspirational story.

Or maybe I need to go back to bed.