Meaning of course, the space between my ears. Seven days back to blogging and already I am drawing a blank.
Mostly that is due to tiredness. I am obviously still not caught up on sleep, as I have had plenty of Z time. Yet I still feel very sleepy and want to sleep the afternoon away.
Can’t tell if that is genuinely sleepiness or just my old addiction to pressing the fast forward button on life, though.
I do find myself finding it hard to stay focused on a task lately. I feel sleepy and tired AND restless and angry at the same time. The oppressive weight of sleepiness makes me feel trapped and yet I am, in a way, addicted to it.
But the really interesting thing is that while I had a book to write, none of this shit happened. It’s like I got a month off from sleepy days and associated bullshit. I guess while I was writing my book, life was stimulating and rewarding enough to keep my mind and body active, and I didn’t have all this excess mental energy overheating that bubbling cauldron of creativity and strangeness I call my mind.
Makes me wish I had just started the next book. But somehow, I knew all along that I wouldn’t. The part of me that wants to curl up in a tight little ball with my back turned to the world and just wait for it all to go away had been waiting patiently all those weeks of writing, and when it got the chance to regain its throne, it took it.
So I find myself thinking about how to get started again. I wanted to preserve the momentum but that clearly is not going to happen. I will have to boost myself up into orbit again. But how?
I haven’t been entirely idle, thank goodness. I did the whole eBook thing. So far, despite people saying they bought it, no sales have appeared on the account. Dunno what that means. I doubt people are lying to me.
Maybe the first ten sales don’t count.
The hard copy edition should be available soon. I just had to fiddle with the back cover copy some, and that means it had to go into the review process again, and yadda yadda yadda.
Latest culinary experiment was a gingerbread coffee cake I had tried once before. It turned out fine, very tasty. Texture is a little too spongy for my tastes but that’s part for the course with coffee cakes in my experience. Not sure why… I am pretty sure they don’t intend you to dunk the cake in your coffee…. but coffee cakes are just like that.
Also getting used to a round cake pan is a bit silly because now I have to cut the thing into triangles instead of squares. That might not be the case with more normal type cakes in the future, but the one I made last night has a crumbly topping and so I could not use the “double flip” method of turning it out of the pan. So it’s still in there.
Today is Sunday, my day off from baking. Tomorrow, I think I will look for a recipe for the kind of soft spice cookies we call molasses cookies back home. Apparently my spice itch is not yet fully scratched.
One good thing about today : I completed the “family” portion of my Xmas shopping. Mom, Dave, Anne, and Catherine all have gifts wending their way. My credit card account is dry now, but whatever. Tis the season! And I had no idea what I was going to do with that money anyhow. So I am super glad it is going to Xmas love.
That still leaves me with the “friends” category : Joe, Julian, and Felicity. I was feeling tense because I didn’t have enough $ on the card to buy all seven gifts. Then I realized that I have a check on the 17th and live two blocks from a mall. Eight days is plenty of time for me to get their gifts as long as it’s in person and not online.
I’m not going to make a lot of progress on the Cracked invasion today. What the hell, even slackers need a day off. Tomorrow, I will finally figure out how to pitch a sketch to them. They have lots of information on how to pitch a listicle, and I am busily trying to get my brain to come up with topics for at least a soft listicle like “5 Stupid Things You Do Every Day” type stuff.
Maybe I will put together something about nerd delusions. That could get them a lot of hate hits.
As you may have deduced from the opening parts of this entry, mood has not been lovely. But fuck it, it’s just mood. I fully intend to develop my strength of will to the point where mood just doesn’t fucking matter. Where I do what I want to do regardless of what I feel like doing.
Call it tough self-love.
Oh, and before I forget again, I want to jot down this very strange dream I had a week or so ago.
It’s strange because it was so detailed and surreal. It took place in a room that looked a lot like a courtroom, but there was no bench or gallery, just a row of jury boxes along one wall. Probably about six of them.
The jury boxes were half full. I remember specifically thinking they are exactly half full. All the occupants were Republicans, and they were watching someone in an elaborate but old-fashioned donkey costume caper about and shake the donkey’s head in response to very sarcastic questions being asked of it.
Every response would get a big laugh from the Republicans. That’s all I remember, and its not exactly a wild trip into the realms of the imagination, but I rarely have dreams like that.
And you know what? I feel better for having let it out of my head.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.