Hmph. This shit has got to stop. Here I am again, banging on the keys through the daze of sleepiness, with too little time between now and when I will be socializing with my friends and in this case, I will also be doing the cooking tonight. I do not need this kind of stress.

But it is my fault, or at least, my problem to solve, because the problem is that now that I have stopped napping, I just do not know how to time my day so that I get the eight hours of sleep without it taking up time when I should be writing.

Clearly, I need to start getting my writing done before I go to sleep for the entire afternoon, at least on social days, and that would mean breaking my aforementioned habit of not writing too early in the day because the rest of the day I will feel depressed and purposeless.

I suppose that it is possible that if I know I am basically going to go to sleep right afterward, that will not be a problem. In fact, I might feel good about myself because I am getting things done in the intelligent and thoughtful way, instead of this random scrambling shit that leaves me typing words slowly through the haze of stress and Zopiclone.

Had therapy today. Let out some of my recent revelations, talked about how I am feeling different lately, more solid, more emotionally fluid, more natural. It is good to feel my emotions flowing through me instead of getting clogged up inside me and making me bloated and confused and weighed down.

Basically, I have had a bad case of emotional constipation for a long long time, and I feel like lately I have been finally clearing that out. It is a matter of both opening up and letting go, and I am increasingly willing to say that everything is on the negotiating table. Everything is up in the air. There is nothing in me that I want to keep if it is going to get in the way of my growth. I am tired of holding myself back from life. I am tired of pretending like I am in charge around here. I just want to go forward with my life and live it.

It feels cool to have my emotions flash through me so rapidly now. They are more intense, which takes some getting used to, and I have no doubt that I have some embarrassing emotional outbursts and other unfortunate fine tuning elements in my future as I learn to handle this kind of turbulence.

But I am never going back to suppressing nearly everything and living life squashed flat under a rock. Fuck that. I will take whatever comes at me and deal with it however, and be a real, live, three dimensional, realtime person, even if it kills me.

The other way of living was killing me anyhow. Right now I am willing to try anything.

Last night I made Loaf 4. It was an attempt at a French style bread. It turned out…. weird. The top of the loaf was all knotted and curled and uneven. Something obviously went awry in the kneading process. But other than a bizarre and misshapen appearance on type, it tastes fine, and so I consider it to me mostly a success as a bread. Just a success with a mystery attached.

Part of that mystery has to do with the fact that there appears to be many definitions of “yeast” in the bread machine world. The recipe for Loaf 4 called for “quick rise” yeast. I have no idea what that means. I have “active” yeast and “bread machine” yeast. Do I seriously need to buy yet a third yeast in order to have my bases covered?

Dammit, when I was a kid, there was Flour, and Yeast. The flour was Sheriff All Purpose White Four, and the yeast was Fleischmann’s, and that was it. Now everything is so complicated, with so many options, and so much knowledge needed to just go shopping. Oy.

See, it is not that I do not see how people become cranky conservatives. I feel that way myself sometimes. But that does not make it true.

Let’s see. I will be making supper for my friends soon. Chicken burgers broiled in the oven, and a nice vegetable pilaf via the rice cooker. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?

I made the pilaf once before, and it was pretty good. We got these cartons of vegetable broth from Costco, and while they are not quite what I would consider an ideal broth, they are still pretty darn good, and make a good base for a pilaf. Just replace the water for the rice with broth, and voila, you got yourself a pilaf.

This time, I will also add a few veggies and some extra spices for flavour. Last time it was nice, but a little subtle for my tastes. “Nice” is not good enough dammit. I want “yummy”.

Of course, in order to do the cooking, I will have to be awake. That has always been my problem with sleeping pills. There’s no off switch! They don’t go away when you need them to so you can be awake and alert and get on with your life. No, they have to hang around and hang around like a socially clueless guest and make you uncomfortable and nervous. But you can;t just kick them out. You have to just keep checking your watch and clearing your throat and making comments about how late it is.

I am sure at least some of that metaphor works.

Well I had better stop writing and start cooking. At least the cooking is largely automatic. Once I load up the rice cooker, that works all on its own, and once the chicken burgers are in the oven, I just have to flip them every ten minutes.

So this is me, signing off. See you tomorrow, everybody!