Haywire

It's fall here and I'm struggling to keep up with things. My sleep schedule is haywire again, and I'm on a nocturnal schedule again. This is getting to be a regular thing, not that I was exactly on a diurnal schedule before, but at least I wasn't sleeping until 22:00 and sitting up all morning. 

Writing isn't going. Having a haywire schedule means not a lot of writing gets done. In fact, this blog post is the first writing of new words I've done in over a week. Honestly, I really hate having to write posts about me not writing, but I'm trying to keep up with my blog, so here you go. 

Crafting isn't even going. I can't make COVID-19 masks. Quilting doesn't appeal. Crochet is out of the question because I don't have any of the things I need for that. I'm relegated to reading the Help files on Etsy for setting up my store and sitting here doing nothing because I want to work on my writing but the only thing I want to do (work on worldbuilding for a NewShiny), is something that isn't on the list and won't be added. 

I don't put doing these blog posts on my task list because I know I need to do them and I don't want to feel pressured over it. When I feel pressured over something, I avoid it and it eventually doesn't happen unless someone intervenes. There were quite a number of research papers and essays and such that almost didn't get written when I was in school because I procrastinated on them until someone sat me down and didn't let me get distracted so I could finish them. 

Because my sleep schedule is haywire, I'm having trouble taking my meds on a set schedule, and that's really essential for me feeling motivated. Though I only recently learned this the past few months, it's something I really need to pay attention to. I'm not sure how to get on a set schedule again, or precisely what schedule I want to be on. But I'll figure everything out. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Sleep, Writing, and Crafting

 I haven't made as much progress as I wanted on my two stories. This is mostly because the level of my motivation has fluctuated over the past couple weeks. My sleep schedule has gone wonky, and I'm learning to settle into playing Pathfinder on Friday nights, two things that mess with my motivation. Honestly, though, it's mostly the sleep issue. Insomnia sucks.

This year, I'm tempted to enter Nano. To do that, I'd have to work on something I've got enough of an outline on, and that means it would be the gay romance, and I'm afraid I'll burn out on it. It's something I'm thinking about, though, and it would be kind of nice to do this rewrite during Nano since the original draft was written in November during the first week of Nano, even though it wasn't an "official" Nano project.

Either way, I'll be getting my words on DH01 and DOTSC01, and transcribing Front. Oh, and that's coming along quite nicely, that transcription. It's both just as sucky and not as sucky as I thought it was, in different ways. Most of the non-sucky parts come in the form of my technical skill with the story. Though that's definitely improved (along with everything else) over the years, I'm consistently surprised by how well things are written in Front, for one of my earliest works.

Otherwise, the crafting bug has bitten me. I've been working on a new quilt (yeah, I started another project—but this is normal for me) that I found a tutorial about online. It's called Pins And Paws, and comes from a quilt company based in Missouri. I find that interesting, because that's where my dad was from. It's funny how things circle around like that. 

Many Tasks at Once

 So the past month has been more successful writing-wise than previous months. I think this in part is because I've trimmed back my writing to a minimum of 250 words and no more than 500 per session. Before, I was writing as much as I wanted. I blasted through scenes and would write for two, three, four days in a row, be dry for the next week. Keeping my wordcount to a low range helps me remain interested without burning me out.

Another thing I think that's helped is that I've added other writing tasks to my roster. 250-500 words a pop on one project wasn't really enough. It felt like a warm-up, so I added a second project. The second project, DOTSC01, has the same range of wordcount as the first, which works well. It also helps prevent bouncy brain where I hop from one project to another in an endless round of distracted writing. 

That worked so well that I decided that it may be a good idea to add another writing task to my list. Hence working on the handwritten story from years ago. This tale of yore is called, Front, or My First Completed Novel Evar!!!, and it has the seeds of my current writing in it. I'm transcribing it directly—not making any corrections—and adding commentary that makes me laugh at least.

And, as if that wasn't enough to have on my list of writing tasks, I decided to rework an old gay romance I wrote years ago. I think I wrote the original draft of this particular story in November of 2009. At the time, I was not participating in NaNo, but I managed to slam out just over 80k words in about 6 days, if I remember right. It's got some major issues. At the time, I didn't know how to handle conflict, hence this reworking of the story. I'm outlining it in Scapple right now. 

Having a number of tasks seems to be working well for me. My writing mind is calmer than it's been for years, and I feel like I'm making progress on everything. I'm having fun too, which is important to me. And, best of all, writing slow brings out detail I wouldn't otherwise be able to include. I'm quite pleased.

So that's where things stand in the writing world. My mental health is doing well with regular dosages of all my psych meds, which is good, and I'm very faithful with taking them at a regular time. I'm also looking into other ways of earning money, primarily by hawking my handcrafts that I make with sewing and crocheting. Things are going well!

A Wild Month

 It's been an interesting month-and-more here. My sleep schedule went haywire, and it threw off a whole lot of other things and I ended up falling into a depression.

Part of the past month, I've been working on the dreaded gay romances I love to hate. I think I'm noticing a pattern with these. Anytime I fall into a depression or struggle with my mood status, I turn to writing the gay romances. It's something I've only just realized happens. When I'm stable and not depressed, I find it easier to focus on my speculative fiction and rarely touch the gay romances.

Also over the past couple months, my wife and I entered into debt consolidation. We weren't horrendously deep in debt, but it would have taken a lot longer for us to crawl up out of it than it will be with the new—single—bill to pay off our debts. I'm looking forward to having this all taken care of within the next few years now. 

One of the things I'm looking into is starting up an Etsy store. I'm going to sit down with my wife, who has far more experience with businesses and such, and see about hammering out a business plan. This is in place of me getting a job with another company. Why? For several reasons, one of them being I need a more sedentary position because my body just can't handle me being on my feet all day. I'll keep y'all updated on progress here and provide more details in my Patreon posts. 

So that's where things stand right now. 

Big Depression Equals New Medication

I feel I owe y'all an explanation of my absence over the duration of July. I know I mentioned prior to July that I was experiencing a depressive phase that was more pronounced than usual. Well, it continued through most of July. It got to the point, in fact, where I spent most or all of some days in bed. Literally. I didn't feel like getting up to do more than use the bathroom and eat. Going to bed got difficult as well, and I was sitting up all night sometimes three nights out of the week every week. See, the depression made me afraid to go to bed, because I didn't want to end up spending the day in bed again. It was just a vicious cycle. But that's what depression does. It locks the person who has it into a vicious circle of tactics to avoid or deal with it, and rarely are they healthy methods.

When I had my video appointment with my psych doc a few weeks ago, I explained to him what was going on. He wanted to be cautious. Instead of replacing one of the psych meds I'm already on, he suggested introducing a new one, to which I agreed. The reasoning behind this is that my mood stabilizers were working fine before the big depressive drop, and he doesn't want to meddle too much with established meds. It's actually easier to add a different medication on top of what I'm taking than take me off of one of my current meds and run through a list of others until we find one that works. And, besides, he could assign a medication specifically to deal with the depression, and go from there. I don't know what other plans he may have for my medications, but I'm glad to say this first one worked.

My psych doc put me on Wellbutrin, whose generic name is bupropion, which is actually the name that appears on the bottle. We were hoping for some improvement in my depression, but this medication just totally wiped it out. Before the heat wave hit, I spent a week being productive. It was fantastic, and if not for the heat wave, I'd have spent the past two or three weeks on an all new schedule. Sleeping at night. Awake during the day. I loved it for the week I had it.

Oh, the heat wave is important, because it messed up my sleeping at night. When the daytime temps hit about 95°F and above—and for about a week and a half, most of our days were over 100°F—I have difficulty staying asleep. I get hot at night and wake up. The window unit air conditioner in the bedroom just could not keep up, and we had nothing in the living room to help it. At times, I woke up to wipe sweat off myself with my sheet. 

That's part of the reason why I spent last night up. I slept all day yesterday—or may as well have been all day, to catch up on missed sleep leftover from the heat wave. From about midnight the night before until 13:00 yesterday, then I laid down for a 2.5 hour nap at 15:00. Even taking my night meds last night didn't help. 

We're getting a new window unit that's supposed to be delivered today or tomorrow, for the living room. With that in place, things should get back on track. I'm looking forward to that!