Oh frabjous day!
So, there've been ups and downs since last post, and for the record I am very touched by the comments and just couldn't figure out how I ought to go about replying without making it like 12 comments and maybe I will do so later but anyway... got the new meds, groceries, cat litter, full tank of gas, continuing to kick ass at my duties at the show and love it to death (who thought I'd be this happy backstage? :) ). A great big fat stinking minus goes to Monday, when I hadn't gotten myself into bad until 5:20, set the alarm for 2:00, was so tired on waking that I decided to just sleep with no alarm for a bit, and long story short chipped my way into consciousness at 10:00 that night. Yes, 17 or so hours of sleep. Yes, a pattern remarkably like last fall's hideous disaster of a sleeping thing. So that was, you know, ungood. However? The next night, I gave myself 7 hours to sleep and felt pretty great.
And last night? Bed at 2:20 or so, alarm at 9 to try chewing some Ritalin in the morning for a boost, alarm reset for 9:30, still tired at 9:30 but feeling a lot better than I have in my sleep lately, alarm reset for 10:00, and now?
Awake and up before 10:00 and feeling fantastic. Some part of my brain thinks maybe it's possible that I could live on like 7 horus (which would a huge break with the past) nowadays, and that therefore my habit of leaving myself 9 hours to sleep could have been hurting me? Or something? It doesn't match my experiences or make much sense, but damned if it wouldn't be the awesomest development ever.
Interesting other thing that's been on my mind (seeing as I skipped a class last Friday, on the whole third day of school, I'm so totally awesome): Whether I skip classes depends not on whether, in this current kind of mental state, I am aware that I can't succeed in school if I skip classes the way I've done in the past. Instead, on any given day, it depends on whether my half-or-mostly-asleep brain believes that I need to go to this class, today, and the unfortunately truth is that my brain can all too easily give that one a no. Now, if I were this up and happy every morning, I don't think it'd be much of a problem, but most days I'm so groggy as I trudge across the room to my alarm clock that I have almost, in the past, reset it or turned it off based on the reality of whatever dream I was just having. I need, like, an alarm clock that requires me to do a minute on a treadmill or something, except that having to listen to the alarm noise for a whole minute would kill me (and now I take a minute to rejoice, because I realize I almost never have the "don't hear alarm" problem anymore, just the "turned it off and went back to sleep without any idea what's going on," and even that less than I once did).
*an alternate cuase of class-skipping, deep anxiety about the difficulties involved/being unprepared, is also a factor, but can be minimized by trying not to fuck the semester up so I get freaked out about everything.
Another random thought/fact: The single best and only 100% effective way for me to get up has always been somebody waking me (and yes, the failure to have set up a learn-to-do-it-myself earlier in life somehow is part of this reality), Mom for when I was little and, the year I made the Dean's list both semesters here, a boyfriend. And I've noticed something else. On difficult sleep mornings, when I feel groggy and dead and am having brief tiny flickers of conversation with consciousness, I occasionally will for some reason think that the sound of footsteps on the apartment landing outside is my Mom come to wake me up. It's a feeling like I'm going to be caught, or the body's sudden attempts to prepare for the danger and chaos of being awake, or something, but when it happens my body floods with adrenaline (or something like it) and I find that, to my unbearable annoyance, what might have been a several hour struggle to try and drag myself out of sleepiness has become, suddenly, completely bodily alertness. I can go back to sleep (I can always go back to sleep), but I can also just get up, because I'm awake.
Have not yet figured out how to reproduce this for every day. Tried phone calls in the past, but I either don't hear them or ignore them because, again, my sleepy brain knows that that that is an option, no matter how much the unsleepy brain wouldn't want me to take it.
Then again, if every day could be like this morning, I'd never have to worry about this again! Which means even though it won't be, I still get to have had a hope that stunning.
Which is pretty cool.
(for the record, yes, it's quite possible the new meds either chemically or, uh, placebo-ly have restored my optimism since I got them yesterday, but it should also be taken into account that there have been lots of ups and downs, I'm just writing this one at an up and the last one at a down.)
Also, the class I haven't had yet (funky schedule), my advanced Japanese for the semester? Is going to apparently be about Japanese music in the last 50 years, so won the lottery there, clearly.
And am currently taking a class with one of my favoritest Professors ever... on musicals.
Life can be kind of awesome.
And last night? Bed at 2:20 or so, alarm at 9 to try chewing some Ritalin in the morning for a boost, alarm reset for 9:30, still tired at 9:30 but feeling a lot better than I have in my sleep lately, alarm reset for 10:00, and now?
Awake and up before 10:00 and feeling fantastic. Some part of my brain thinks maybe it's possible that I could live on like 7 horus (which would a huge break with the past) nowadays, and that therefore my habit of leaving myself 9 hours to sleep could have been hurting me? Or something? It doesn't match my experiences or make much sense, but damned if it wouldn't be the awesomest development ever.
Interesting other thing that's been on my mind (seeing as I skipped a class last Friday, on the whole third day of school, I'm so totally awesome): Whether I skip classes depends not on whether, in this current kind of mental state, I am aware that I can't succeed in school if I skip classes the way I've done in the past. Instead, on any given day, it depends on whether my half-or-mostly-asleep brain believes that I need to go to this class, today, and the unfortunately truth is that my brain can all too easily give that one a no. Now, if I were this up and happy every morning, I don't think it'd be much of a problem, but most days I'm so groggy as I trudge across the room to my alarm clock that I have almost, in the past, reset it or turned it off based on the reality of whatever dream I was just having. I need, like, an alarm clock that requires me to do a minute on a treadmill or something, except that having to listen to the alarm noise for a whole minute would kill me (and now I take a minute to rejoice, because I realize I almost never have the "don't hear alarm" problem anymore, just the "turned it off and went back to sleep without any idea what's going on," and even that less than I once did).
*an alternate cuase of class-skipping, deep anxiety about the difficulties involved/being unprepared, is also a factor, but can be minimized by trying not to fuck the semester up so I get freaked out about everything.
Another random thought/fact: The single best and only 100% effective way for me to get up has always been somebody waking me (and yes, the failure to have set up a learn-to-do-it-myself earlier in life somehow is part of this reality), Mom for when I was little and, the year I made the Dean's list both semesters here, a boyfriend. And I've noticed something else. On difficult sleep mornings, when I feel groggy and dead and am having brief tiny flickers of conversation with consciousness, I occasionally will for some reason think that the sound of footsteps on the apartment landing outside is my Mom come to wake me up. It's a feeling like I'm going to be caught, or the body's sudden attempts to prepare for the danger and chaos of being awake, or something, but when it happens my body floods with adrenaline (or something like it) and I find that, to my unbearable annoyance, what might have been a several hour struggle to try and drag myself out of sleepiness has become, suddenly, completely bodily alertness. I can go back to sleep (I can always go back to sleep), but I can also just get up, because I'm awake.
Have not yet figured out how to reproduce this for every day. Tried phone calls in the past, but I either don't hear them or ignore them because, again, my sleepy brain knows that that that is an option, no matter how much the unsleepy brain wouldn't want me to take it.
Then again, if every day could be like this morning, I'd never have to worry about this again! Which means even though it won't be, I still get to have had a hope that stunning.
Which is pretty cool.
(for the record, yes, it's quite possible the new meds either chemically or, uh, placebo-ly have restored my optimism since I got them yesterday, but it should also be taken into account that there have been lots of ups and downs, I'm just writing this one at an up and the last one at a down.)
Also, the class I haven't had yet (funky schedule), my advanced Japanese for the semester? Is going to apparently be about Japanese music in the last 50 years, so won the lottery there, clearly.
And am currently taking a class with one of my favoritest Professors ever... on musicals.
Life can be kind of awesome.