Yesterday morning my usual attempt at stumbling up in the early-dark to be a writer turned into me lolling about on the couch with a splitting headache (moaning softly to myself till the pills kicked in). Clearly I would have to give up on writing, so I slept till I had to get up for work. But the headache had a good hold on my skull, vicious as ever, and I ended up taking the day off. For nothing. I basically got up intermittently to take pills and sleep. It was a waste of a day and I am now even more behind than I was before at work, and now also off my rhythm with the revising.

Reason for headache… stress?

I slept so much yesterday that I could barely sleep last night. I kept waking up. I kept lying on my back staring at the dark ceiling telling myself not to have another ceiling nightmare (long story) and telling myself to go to sleep and telling myself if I slept I could write tomorrow and all that, and at some point I must have slept because I do remember the alarm going off at crazy-o’clock and fumbling down out of the loft to turn it off.

The clock radio was playing Led Zeppelin. Which reminds me of my childhood.

Either way, I am here at the café revising. I took a big table so I can spread out my edited pages and if anyone thinks that’s unfair they can suck it!

Gotta revise the mood before work today.

So hey, I do not understand, I really just do not understand, how other writers are able to do this. Write, work, have lives—this. How, tell me, how? I am so tired. I can barely function by eight o’clock at night.

Recently the thought came to me at how easy it would be not to do this. When something’s all up in your face in front of you—your day job, which pays your bills—you pay attention and do that first. It’s only practical. And you put off doing everything else till later, which becomes next week, next month, next year. That’s how writers don’t end up writing because they have to live first.

I could just live, you know. My days would be busied up with all that—and I’d have time and energy to clean the apartment for guests next week, answer emails, write notes on the awesome pages a writer sent me for feedback, organize bills, redecorate, read novels, paint my nails, do, I dunno, stuff. I’d have time for STUFF.

But something’s keeping me from doing that. I just wish I could stop whinging about it all the time.

I would also like to announce that my right leg is asleep for the second time this morning, which is how my brain felt yesterday after the headache, so I guess that’s what some might call progress.