Is it writer's block...

if I can't even bring myself to open the frelling document before it's three a.m. and I have exhausted every other possibility of entertainment? I sort of sit at the computer all day, with the thesis folder open in the task bar as if I'm *just* about to open a file, and read the Engrish blog, and Cute Overload, and boingboing, and I Can Has Cheezburger, and half a dozen eco sites, and basically every timewaster site there is on the net. I'm not even writing fic, or spamming Mikey with comments anymore, which was at least a sort-of-useful form of procrastination... I'm really just killing time - when time is the last thing I can afford to lose.

Needless to say, my sleep rhythm is completely out of whack again, too. And I'm totally panicking at the thought of next week, which is a week where I have four hour shifts instead of my usual two hours, and those four hour shifts involve a type of work that does not really allow you to write 'on the side', as the two hour shifts usually do. Basically, I'll be at work all day (or what constitutes 'all day' if your regular day is only five hours long because your sleep pattern is fucked up) and only get home at about ten in the evening, probably somewhat exhausted, and then I'll have to make dinner and stuff, and *then*, at eleven in the evening or so, I will be able to start working. If I'm still able to work then, that is.

Actually, the more I consider this, the more sense it makes to just give in to my bizarre sleep rhythm and redefine three p.m. as 'morning,' at least for the next week, and possibly for the rest of the writing phase. That way, I'd get to go to work about two hours after waking up next week, and would have the entire night 'day' left for working on my thesis. I could go to sleep at, say, eight a.m. or so? One thing that really fucks me up at the moment is trying to fight my sick sleep pattern all the time. See, normally - I mean, 'normally' for a value of 'normal' that includes my current severe sleep problem - I'd probably go to bed after posting this - i.e. at a quarter to four a.m. or so. And then I'd spend several hours in bed trying to go to sleep - probably until around eight or so in the morning. And then I'd sleep until my alarm clock would wake me up for the first time - and because I'm constantly fighting my sleep rhythm, that would probably be at eleven or so, after only three hours of sleep. So of course I'd go to sleep again after the alarm rang. And probably sleep until the early afternoon.

I may as well give up on the pretense of being able to sleep before eight if I go to bed by four, and just *work* till eight; actually get a few pages of writing done.

Oh fuck. I forgot that I actually have to work early on Tuesday and Thursday. *sigh* There goes that plan.

Though I suppose I could go to sleep *after* work on those days.

That would be at about half past eleven in the morning. So... if I get up at half past four in the afternoon to go to work, that'd still be about five hours of sleep.

Hey, why don't I just stop sleeping altogether?

*groan*

I can haz normal sleep pattern, plz? I'm not exactly the most efficient person at the best of times, but this? This is just screwing me up in so many ways, and it exacerbates the writer's block-induced inefficiency like nobody's business.

(Filename is now: Frankensteins_thesis.odt, because I've begun patching my various truncated attempts at introductions and whatnot together. So far, it's fifteen pages of fail.)

What it all comes down to:

I don't function well without pressure.

But I don't function well under pressure, either.

Bottom line: I. Don't. Function. Well.

In fact, I pretty much don't function at all, most of the time.

(Insert philosophico-political discussion of the idea of 'functioning.')

I *think*... I actually probably don't need to worry much about my final grade at all, because - unlikely as they are even in the case of me getting a spectacularly good grade - all the 'interesting', desirable jobs come with pressures I probably wouldn't be able to deal with, anyway. So, I think, the only jobs I could possibly hold down are probably low-expectations, low-perspectives ones. (I know from experience that I can deal with repetitive, mechanical work on a regular schedule, because I've done that and on the whole felt pretty okay with it as long as it left me the headspace to think about other stuff while I was doing it.)

'course, that dramatically increases my already dramatic risk of ending my life in utter poverty. But if it gets me through the decades of my working life in good health and reasonable happiness, and perhaps with some time and energy left for writing and art, instead of in a constant state of near-collapse, that may very well be worth it.

Won't make my parents very happy, though.

(All of this is based on the optimistic assumption that society and the ecosystem are not going to collapse in the next sixty years, and that, therefore, things like jobs and money and so on will continue to be somewhat relevant, and that I'm actually going to reach my old age, even if perhaps in poverty, instead of being hit at 48 by a flying roof tile in a freak storm while on my way to the supermarket. Because, yeah, I still harbour some hope that somehow, we'll manage to Turn Things Around before everything goes south. They'll pry *that* bit of hope from my cold, dead fingers, hah.)

On the occasion of John Simm's latest role

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObI4eaK_GIA&feature=related

(Sorry, couldn't find a better video of it; it's the song that matters, really, just ignore the visuals.)