hmpf

I've been using f.lux for a few weeks now.

Well, I don't know if it's the program, or the fact that my life has turned busy and scary in about the same timeframe, but I've been getting monstrously tired really really early in the last few weeks. It's half past ten now, and I'm so knackered I can barely think.

I'm not sure I like this effect. I'd like to... not be a complete wreck in the evenings, yet still be able to sleep reasonably early? Is that possible?

I've been getting up early in the morning to go to work (even if it wasn't paid work), etc. - and falling asleep at fairly 'normal' times. Now, barely a week into proper unemployed life, I'm already severely insomniac again, and completely unable to get up in the morning. In fact, I've been unable to visit the appropriate agencies because I haven't been able to make myself get up at a time when they're open (which is usually between 8 and 12:30 or so in the morning). It's not the depression often attributed to the unemployed - in fact, I kind of dread finding a job more than being unemployed at the moment, although I do know a job is necessary. My sense of self-worth and so on are not tied to having a job. It's quite simply an inability to submit to a normal diurnal rhythm without some *strong* outside force. As soon as the responsibility for my sleeping pattern lies only with me, with no pressure from an employer to get me out of bed, it decays.

This wouldn't be so bad if it really were the case that I can do everything I want and need to do in a given day at night just as well as in the morning. But of course that isn't true. I want to make jewellery, and that's noisy - so that's something I can only do during normal 'business hours'. Same goes, of course, for all the necessary bureaucratic stuff of daily life, especially unemployed life. There's even the fact that I *like* mornings, I like daylight, and I want to go for walks in the park and so on - and I won't be getting much daylight if I only get up in the afternoon, now that it's autumn. It gets dark early, here.

This is exasperating. I don't know what to do. Can somebody please force me out of bed at, say, 9:30 a.m.? That would be a more than humane time to get up by anyone's standards, yet I can't seem to manage it (and I can't seem to go to sleep before 6 a.m.)

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.)

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...

60% M.A. thesis fear
10% fear of not finding a job in summer/autumn 2009
5% fear of finding a job that will eat my life
10% awareness of precarious pecuniary situation
10% social guilt
5% frustration at lack of headspace for creative endeavours
----------------------------------------------------
100% insomnia

Though, to be honest, tonight it's more like

30% M.A. thesis fear
10% fear of not finding a job
5% fear of finding a job
45% awareness of precarious pecuniary situation
5% social guilt
5% frustration at lack of headspace for creativity

The result is still 100% insomnia, though.

It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't affect my eyes and my back so badly. Unfortunately, after a few sleepless nights my eyes and my back are pretty much killing me, and while caffeine will help keep me awake and somewhat functional for thesis preparation purposes through the day, there's nothing that can be done to combat the back and eye pain.

Well, I guess I could take painkillers. But really, needing massive doses of caffeine to get through the day is bad enough. I don't want to get dependent on something worse than that.