Last night was my second night taking Quetiapine (pronounced kwet tie uh peen), and as I suspected, the results were far less drastic than the first time.

It did make me sleepy, but it took around an hour to do it, and I did not sleep all day like I did on Friday. I suspect that Friday’s result will prove highly atypical, and were the result of taking the pill when I already had a fairly heavy sleep debt built up.

So the pill just triggered a “sleepy day” that was probably going to happen soon anyhow. In some ways, that is a great relief. Catching up on sleep is great, but sleeping that much every single day would have gotten really old, really fast.

I already feel like I am sleeping my life away. I would hate to add sleeping 16 hours a day to that.

Which brings up that terrible subject, my tendency to nap when I am bored. That is still going to be a problem, no matter how good my sleeping pill might be. If I am not all that tired when I take the thing, it is not going to have a big effect. I doubt there is a sleeping pill around that can put you to sleep for eight hours even if you have already gotten six hours of sleep that day.

At least, none that are likely to be prescribed by my psychologist for just basic hyposomnia.

So once more, we are back at the “no napping” thing. It was a nice vacation from thinking about it while it lasted, but now that the whole new pill thing is in place, I have to go back to facing what the basic problem with my sleep is, and it is not sleep apnea or the wrong sleeping pill.

It is this napping through the day. I will never get a normal sleep pattern, eight hours a day in a row , until I can stop the napping, and that involves me learning to find more things to do with myself besides fuck around online, and reading till I fall asleep.

That means either writing a lot more than I do now, or finding activities around the apartment to do that are not my Usual Two, or maybe even (gasp) doing stuff outside the apartment.

I mean, I understand there is life outside my apartment.

But I am probably not ready for that yet.

Writing more is always an option. I could just casually double my daily word quota to 2000 words. That would certainly give me a lot more to do, but I am not sure it would get me anywhere. After all, it is not like my current quota of words is going out to an ever-expanding audience of fascinated readers.

(But remember, I value every single one of you that reads these words and makes this whole thing work for me, and I treasure every comment you leave. I love you all, and I take none of you for granted. )

I have also been contemplating coming up with a new crazy writing stunt, like “30 stories in 30 days”, or “10,000 words in a day”, or something like that. It would be more fun and more motivating than just an arbitrary word quota rise, but it, in and of itself, would not really get me anywhere either.

Does not matter what wild and wacky shit I do if nobody knows about it, does it? It would be like breaking a Guinness World Record with nobody around to witness it.

That would be a lot of hot dogs eaten for no damn reason.

That brings us to the subject of self-promotion. I… don’t do that. Which is kind of a problem. Clearly, all my hopes of some wildfire word of mouth campaign making me super famous are in vain and were probably not too realistic in the first place.

Especially since this blog is not a part of any social network or online community except for Livejournal and Tumblr, and even on those, I have no exactly worked hard to network and make connections with other bloggers and build up a following that way, either.

It is just so damned hard for me to put myself out there. I have this idea in my mind of putting together a grid of markets and stories, and it seems like the sort of thing that might actually work in terms of getting my stuff out there in some sort of methodical way, but so far, I have not gotten around to actually making the thing, let alone gathering ten of my stories together and doing the necessary proofreading and revision to make them presentable to the world.

Oh well, you can only do what you can do. Despite what popular media tends to teach, wanting something really bad is not the same thing as having enough motivation to actually do it. At least, not when you suffer from a disease called depression which acts like a black hole from which no motivation can escape.

All I really can do is let my energies build slowly over time while my recovery works its way through the twisted corridors of my mind, straightening things out (so to speak) as it goes, putting all my crazy little ducks into neat little rows.

It sucks to wait so long for health though. I am eager to go live life instead of letting it pass me by, but I can’t yet, not really. I can only get a little bit better every day, and live in hope of the day when I can break free from my old tired depressed self and be a stronger, healthier, happier me.

But Enlightenment comes a little at a time, and until then, I suppose I just better make peace with my cell, and try to make my experience in this self-administered mental ward as pleasant as possible.

And maybe spend more time on making things better, and less time looking out the window.