That’s how I feel right now. Like my head is in a vise. But don’t worry, folks, it’s just a sinus headache. The pressure is from the inside, not the outside, and I know how to deal with it.

Just have to clear the drainage routes, and let the rest sort itself out. Gross but effective.

Just woke up from some really interesting dreams that I don’t remember. Isn’t that a kick in the pants? I know they were really interesting, so interesting that not only did I want to go right back to sleep to continue them, but I distinctly remember thinking “Wow, maybe I should write about this!”

But then my mind cleared away the cobwebs and now I have no idea what they were. Dammit. Of all the cheap lousy tricks for my brain to play on me! Oh well. Perhaps something will trigger the dreams and they will all come flooding back. That has happened to me before.

Or maybe I will be lucky, and dream more about the same dreams.

I should really keep a notebook near my bed for capturing these dreams. It definitely feels good to write them down and thus release them into the world.

Mood has been not great today. I have felt frustrated and trapped and irritable. I am taking this to mean that I need to do something more than just this daily writing soon. I need something more to do with all supercharged mental energies.

Time to open up the pathways inside and write some fiction. I have notes for a short (ish) story regarding teleportation. It will be the next thing I write, unless a red-hot brilliant idea strikes me with meteoric force before that and just plain forces me to write it before I can get any rest.

It could happen.

I probably won’t start writing the story today. Felicity is coming over tonight and I will be spending the evening in her charming company. But soon, my precious, soon.

Told my therapist I was going to swear off caffeine for a week and see how I felt. Completely failed to do so, in fact, was consuming diet cola during my ill-fated White Spot lunch.

I am beginning to wonder if I have some sort of caffeine habit. At the very least, it is hard for me not to order a drink while I am dining out, and the only option available to me in such circumstances is diet cola. That is the only sugarless option in 99.9 percent of all restaurants.

Well, I could get herbal tea or juice or something, but I am not really into hot beverages and juice tends to be expensive and with no free refills, either.

And I am as addicted to the carbonated beverages as everyone else. There must be some logical reason why making things fizzy is so addictive. But I am hooked, and none of the other options are fizzy.

So I end up drinking diet cola there. Throw in the occasional 2L of diet cola I get to accompany my nightly snacking habit, and that naughty caffeine ends up in my bloodstream fairly regularly, especially considering the fact that I am not a coffee drinker.

I might even drink some tonight, with dinner, in order to perk myself up for a social evening. Oh, the tangled web we weave when our brain chemistry we deceive!

And who knows, my whole theory that caff causes my super sleepy days might be entirely false. I have no idea. And I will not truly know until I can do the only meaningful experiment available to me, and go without for a while.

Trickier than it seems, apparently.

I ma a little depressed about financial matters. Once more, a five week month will cancel out most of the benefits of my GST check showing up this month.

Granted, with superior forethought (and skipping a stupid lunch at White Spot), I could have taken my usual amount of spendable cash and stretched it over the five weeks somehow.

But no matter how hard I try, I never seem to see these five week months coming. I only just today took a look at the calendar and said “No way is my check coming on the 16th…” then looked up my official check date. Nope. Not till the 23rd.

Isn’t that just lovely. No job would expect you to accept occasionally getting the same amount of money for an extra week’s work. But we are the poor, the desperate, the disabled, and we are at society’s mercy, to be tortured at its will.

After all, having the occasional five week month makes things easier for the bureaucrats who run the system, and so what if it makes life harder for the people who have no choice but to beg for crumbs at society’s feasting table?

We should be glad we get anything but a kick in the head, right?

My therapist says I should try to get onto full disability, and he’s right. The last time I tried, I got all wrapped up in bureaucratic confusion and gave up. This time, hopefully, I will do better.

Being so easily discouraged is a real problem of mine. It is very hard for me to summon up the motivation to do things anyhow. I am always so hesitant and cautious and frankly cowardly.

Then when I do commit to doing them, I only have a certain amount of conviction, and if that gets all used up in complications or fear, then I slink away and it is a long long time before I can try again.

It is sad, really, and it has kept me back for a long long time. I hope to learn not to do it. Learn to just commit to something and stick with it until it is done, come what may.

But even typing those words, I feel a clutching at my chest like I am being trapped in something.

Yeah… trapped in success.