Update

[hmpf]

Actually working all day now, i.e. upwards of eight hours per day. Literally the only time I'm not working is when I'm trying to sleep, which takes inordinately long to accomplish. It takes between four and six hours for me to manage to fall asleep. Since I can't function without sufficient sleep for more than a couple of days that means that most days I spend insane amounts of time in bed - twelve hours in bed gets me six hours of sleep. Going to sleep can be hard work if your brain is constantly nattering away at you. I tend to try to calm the inevitable panic with mindfic, which sometimes does the trick - except when it works *too* well and becomes inimical to sleep in its own right.

My research is making progress now, which is good. The online version of Science Fiction Studies and Neil Barron's impressive bibliography of the science fiction field, "The Anatomy of Wonder", are proving useful in determining what books might be good to get on interlibrary loan. I've also started reading through the archives of When Fangirls Attack, although that's of limited usefulness so far.

I miss real food. Deep-freeze pizza and sandwiches just aren't very good for the soul... (And it's only been a few weeks... arrgh.)

On the plus side: researching indie fantasy comics of the nineties led me to Artesia, which rocks rather a lot more than I expected. Heroic fantasy - despite my love of Tolkien - is usually not quite my thing. But then, "Artesia" is not exactly cookie-cutter heroic fantasy... This just may be the first comic I'm aware of (outside the unique and disturbing universe(s) of Donna Barr, that is) which actually equals Finder in terms of depth and breadth and *believability* of the world it creates.

Speaking of Finder... Do I love Roy or do I love Roy? Heh.

Right. Going to bed now, to wrestle with sleep and 'write' some sickeningly domestic/bizarrely disturbing mindfic...

Comments

Re: But I *am* sleepy when I go to bed.

[dswdiane.livejournal.com]

Okay. I have a very comfortable recliner chair where I do my reading out of bed.

You go ahead and do what you need to do to get your sleep. I was just trying to tell you what sleep researchers have found to work in helping folks get the sleep they need.

I sure understand how anxiety can interfere with the ability to sleep. I think your strategies for working with the anxiety are sane and sensible.

The only comment I would make is that if your strategies don't work, stop trying to sleep and do something to take your mind off what you are anxious about. Try to learn that the pillow and the bed mean sleep time and even if you are sleepy when you go to bed, if you can't sleep because the anxieties take over, get up and do something boring to take your mind off anxieties until you are overwhelmingly sleepy again. And then don't allow yourself to take the anxieties to bed again.

Thinking is a behavior and you can control what you think about as you have already told me. Much better to spin out a fantasy than think about what you need to do that hasn't been done yet.

{{{hugs}}}