I am so sleepy today!

Honestly, it’s about time. I have been getting away with only five hours of sleep a night for too long. So I honestly don’t mind sleeping all day if it means I get caught up on sleep. It’s not like I have a lot of important things planned for this afternoon anyhow.

Tomorrow, the grind resumes. The next week of class has no mornings or afternoons off, so I guess the honeymoon period is over and from here on in, it’s the full deal. I don’t mind, really. It was nice to have the small mercies of a period off here in there up to now, but I didn’t sign up for VFS to not work.

I do have one bit of homework pending : my short script for Short Script class. I will, of course, be writing that American Intervention piece. I can’t wait. I was going to write it this weekend, but I am too ill. It will have to wait.

It’s not due till Friday, so I have time.

My illness seems to be on the way out. Just like last time I had a cold, it seems like it comes, hangs around for a while without ever becoming more than mild, and then leaves. It’s not as good as never getting sick in the first place, but it’s not all that bad.

Right now, besides the sleepiness which may or may not be associated, the main thing is that I still have the heaviness in the chest. I am kind of hoping the phlegm loosens up so I can start coughing it out soon. It’s gross and inconvenient and kind of a drag, but it feels good to be rid of the stuff.

Then again, my chest feels lighter than yesterday, so maybe I will roll a natural 20 and get out of this cold without the goo stage entirely.

That would be nice.

Oh, and for the record, I did end up going to FRED last night. And I had a good time. But by the end of it, I felt pretty ill, and was eager to go home. I was very hot, and I I felt like my limbs weighed a ton each, and my earings were ringing slightly. So I was glad to get home, strip naked, and lay down with my head like six inches from the fan so I could cool the fudge down.

Right now, it’s mostly the tiredness that is dragging me down. It’s hard for me to stay focused on the bloggification. My mind keeps wandering away as the sleepiness rises within me, then I have to patiently guide my mind back to the point like it’s a well-meaning but easily distracted toddler.

“Timmy? Timmy? Look at me, Timmy. No, Timmy… LOOK AT ME. Now…. are you listening? Good. We need to get back to making the cookies, Timmy. Remember the cookies? You want to help me make the cookies, right Timmy? The yummy, yummy cookies!”.

I was kind of a Timmy. My mind would wander freely. I always had part of my mind monitoring what people were saying for things that were relevant to me (not a long list when you are 3) but most of my mind was wandering with the same enthusiasm and energy normal kids used for actually moving around and playing. I was too timid for that. In my mind, I felt safe.

It’s very sad, but it’s me.

And that complex inner realm is not without its rewards. Without ever meaning to do it, I have been developing my mind and my consciousness for my entire life, or at least, for as long as I can remember. That’s where I learned to think deeply about things, and figure out how things work and how they connect to one another. How to listen to that inner voice that thinks far more deeply than the conscious mind could ever hope to fathom. How to have my mind open to unwilled events, like inspiration.

And that’s what led to all my little talents, like writing. All my wizardry is the result of inner exploration. Possibly including my empathy, or at least, my sympathy.

I have been pondering my empathic reality lately. I have always gotten a lot of empathic input, wanted or unwanted, true or false. I never have trouble understanding how other people feel or why – I am a very understanding kinda guy. ^[1] And I am not the sort of person who rejects the unconscious mind. I would be in pretty deep trouble if I was limited to the products of conscious mentation. Nor do I have any issues regarding accepting the reality of empathy.

And yet, lately I have been feeling like I am, despite those credentials, still trapped in a rationalist box. I can accept the products of empathy…. but only if I can slot them into a rational interpretation of the world. I would never simply act on my intuitions without checking them with the rational mind. Whereas I can act on rational thought while completely ignoring the deeper mind as unreliable and, to be frank, quite stupid.

And that’s not right. I know this. There is nothing wrong with acting on emotion, for emotional reasons, now and then. Some people get through life doing little else. I go on about how there is no noise, only signal we don’t understand yet, but I know that I screen out a lot of what happens in my head as noise in order to preserve my rationality, and I am beginning to wonder how wise that is.

Maybe I would be a lot better off if I actually listening to the winds of my mind instead of ignoring them and suffer as a result of the resulting inner whirlwind.

Maybe the most rational course of action is to stop being so damned rational all the time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.