Writing, creating, and not-sleeping
Back to not-sleeping. It's a new thing for me, really -- before this, there have been isolated one-night-stands of insomnia, just 'the night before' some event, or just 'the night after' some catastrophe (getting fired is the one that comes first to mind). But this is different -- in the past four months or so it suddenly seems that I might have forgotten how to get a good night's sleep.
Some of it looks like a continuation of 'avoidance behavior' -- doing crossword puzzles before bed in the old way, but pushing past the initial sleepiness to see if I can finish this one, and then finding myself awake maybe; or the same thing with computer solitaire.
Some of it looks more unconscious even than that. Last night I finally got to sleep before 2 am, but at 5:30 came bolt-awake -- hours before the six-hour minimum my body likes. I knew before I got up that the day would have scratchy eyes and short breath, and a pervasive dragginess ... but as soon as I closed my eyes my head started with the do-list, and as soon as I wrote down whatever needed to be 'listed', the internal voices started going over yesterday's conversations, 'shoulda said this, coulda said that, what's the matter with you that you said the other' ... so I got up.
So far the day's been great, really -- got my 20-mile errand done before rush-hour traffic started, so the long outdated two-lane highway was easy instead of being a real pill. Came back to a couple of intriguing e-mails and successfully disconnected myself from solitaire.
Yesterday I got one of the unfinished novel drafts out of the drawer -- this is the Painter one, in which (the story so far) a very old lady unlocks the attic to show her great-granddaughter the paintings she made before the child's grandmother was born, and never showed to anyone else in the family. The paintings are magic in some important way, gateways to other realms or something like that (the writing hasn't shown up to tell me this yet).
So far the really intriguing thing about this novel, strictly from the authorial viewpoint, is that without my conscious intention it turns out that she painted the first one in the same year that I was born, and when she was exactly the age that I remember from my own life with the most fondness. Since both of these facts turned up only after I realized I would have to do the math in order to know what decade's details to put into the settings, I am still standing amazed at the power of subconscious creation when I give it voice.
And I was noticing that the middle of the day had somehow become a little bit crowded, when the phone just rang -- my dentist would be delighted if I showed up early. Thank you, Universe.
Some of it looks like a continuation of 'avoidance behavior' -- doing crossword puzzles before bed in the old way, but pushing past the initial sleepiness to see if I can finish this one, and then finding myself awake maybe; or the same thing with computer solitaire.
Some of it looks more unconscious even than that. Last night I finally got to sleep before 2 am, but at 5:30 came bolt-awake -- hours before the six-hour minimum my body likes. I knew before I got up that the day would have scratchy eyes and short breath, and a pervasive dragginess ... but as soon as I closed my eyes my head started with the do-list, and as soon as I wrote down whatever needed to be 'listed', the internal voices started going over yesterday's conversations, 'shoulda said this, coulda said that, what's the matter with you that you said the other' ... so I got up.
So far the day's been great, really -- got my 20-mile errand done before rush-hour traffic started, so the long outdated two-lane highway was easy instead of being a real pill. Came back to a couple of intriguing e-mails and successfully disconnected myself from solitaire.
Yesterday I got one of the unfinished novel drafts out of the drawer -- this is the Painter one, in which (the story so far) a very old lady unlocks the attic to show her great-granddaughter the paintings she made before the child's grandmother was born, and never showed to anyone else in the family. The paintings are magic in some important way, gateways to other realms or something like that (the writing hasn't shown up to tell me this yet).
So far the really intriguing thing about this novel, strictly from the authorial viewpoint, is that without my conscious intention it turns out that she painted the first one in the same year that I was born, and when she was exactly the age that I remember from my own life with the most fondness. Since both of these facts turned up only after I realized I would have to do the math in order to know what decade's details to put into the settings, I am still standing amazed at the power of subconscious creation when I give it voice.
And I was noticing that the middle of the day had somehow become a little bit crowded, when the phone just rang -- my dentist would be delighted if I showed up early. Thank you, Universe.