I have been napping in the afternoon again.

This would not normally be noteworthy, but I recently had a good streak going of sleepless afternoons, and I was enjoying that. It was nice to be able to be up all day and sleep only at night. It felt right.

But no, I am back to sleeping in the afternoons. Sometimes it feels like I have no choice, like I am just too sleepy to do anything else and so naptime it is.

But other times, I feel like I chose it. I could have roused myself to a higher state of alertness, but I chose to do what was easier and go back to sleep. And I don’t like that.

I want to live, damn it. Not spend my days in suspended animation.

But I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. ^[1] There may be other factors involved. Today, for instance, is the day after I stayed up till 5 am watching videos with Le Gang, and so that might just have had an effect. Plus, it is always possible that there is something circadian going on due to the change of season and the longer days. Maybe I am still adjusting.

But as you wonderful readers know, I find it depressing to sleep so much. It steals my life away. I was doing well for a while with the whole needing to find something to do because I am not going to sleep thing, and it sucks to have backtracked.

It’s hardly fatal, though. I will get back on my feet again. And I will get my life moving.

Actually, I have already done that, in a way. Big announcement : I have applied to Kwantlen for that creative writing thing.

Sadly, there were no slots open until the Fall, so I won’t actually be starting school till September. And I am still not sure how long it will take. From what I can gather from the website, it can’t be more than a two semester program, and yet other places on the website say it’s a two year program.

If it really does take two years, that might be a dealbreaker. I am not getting any younger and I would prefer to be able to apply to VFS, certificate in hand, before 2017. By then, I will be 44, and by the time I was done the VFS program, I would be 45, and that would suck taint.

Most importantly, I would be worried about keeping my motivation to go to VFS for that long. I am the kind of guy who loses focus as easily as people lose umbrellas, and two years is an awfully long time relative to that.

So if it turns out that, somehow, taking one single semester course and two double semester courses takes two years, I will likely back out of the associates program and find something swifter.

I want to go to VFS and learn to write for film and television! Mostly television.

Oh, and I fucked up and won’t have meds for half of tomorrow. I thought I had enough of my non-psychoactive meds (Januvia, Metformin, Glyburide, Lipitor) to last me till Monday, but I was off by half a day.

And I absolutely cannot get these particular meds before Monday because only my local pharmacy, the Medicine Shoppe, has the relevant prescriptions on file.

So in the future, I will know that it is far better to have the prescription in my possession than to leave it on file with a pharmacy, or at least, not the Medicine Shoppe and their not being open on Sundays.

Like the Asian dudes who work there need time off for church on Sunday. ^[2]

What else… oh, I got an email from the Stand Up For Mental Health people saying they would be taking in new students in May and asking if I was still interested.

And at first I didn’t know, because I didn’t know when I would be starting at Kwantlen. But now that I know I won’t be starting til the fall, hell yeah I’m interested!

Something to teach mental health patients to do standup comedy so we can use standup comedy for better mental health? That sounds like it was made for me!

Now, obviously, I already can do comedy. I’m a funny dude. And learning to write material for standup will be only slightly different, in the grand scheme of things, than the skit writing I have done in the past. And I could probably figure out the basics of how to do standup just from all the standup comedy I have seen over the years.

The real benefit will be that it will force me to get out of the apartment, get my ass to a certain place at a certain time, and most importantly, deal with meeting and getting along with a group of strangers with whom I may have nothing in common except for the comedy thing.

That’s the real challenge for me. I may well have to do the sort of free form socializing that I fear the most. There might be group work. There might be pairing off. There might be any number of social pitfalls that I haven’t even thought of. It will not be a safe thing to do.

And that’s just what I need. Risk… but not too much of it. After all, these people all have mental health issues, and I am guessing the slight majority of them will be fellow depressives^[3], so I will have that much in common with them. And it will be all/mostly about comedy, and that’s a subject I am extremely comfortable with.

Perhaps TOO comfortable. (dramatic STING!)

I guess that’s the local update. Hopefully I will come up with something else to write about tomorrow.

After all, even the most self-involved neurotic gets tired of talking about themselves now and then!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.