1448: New Term

Taking a break from the board game posts for today, largely because I’ve left it a bit late to start faffing around with taking photographs and whatnot. I’m quite tired and it’s back to work properly tomorrow; I’d like to try and be up and about at a reasonable time in the morning so I have time to do “stuff” of an indeterminate nature before I have to actually start working, but we both know that’s statistically quite unlikely to happen.

This is one of the many problems with working from home. I mean, sure, it’s great to not have to commute anywhere. And, theoretically, being able to stay in bed until pretty much whatever time you want so long as you actually get the work done before the end of the day is pretty great.

But it’s not, really. The temptation when provided with potentially limitless time to lie in bed in the morning is to… well, lie in bed for a limitless amount of time until you really can’t justify lying there any more. To be fair to myself, I have never actually overslept to such a degree that I haven’t started working by the semi-arbitrary 11am start time I set myself to knuckle down and start writing, but I’ve cut it fine a few times.

Getting up is hard, though. I find it quite difficult to get to sleep quickly at night-time — much to my chagrin, Andie can fall asleep in a matter of seconds — and thus I like to enjoy as much restful sleep as I possibly can. Then there’s the matter of “morning dreams” — the incredibly vivid workings of my imaginative subconscious that I can usually recall rather well for a few moments after I wake up, and indeed have documented a number of times on these very pages. (Obligatory link to “the poo dream” post for the benefit of my good friend who occasionally comments here.) These are often so compelling that it’s difficult to tear myself away from them, even though I know even as they’re happening that they’re nothing but dreams, and they almost certainly won’t conclude in a satisfying manner.

At least I am able to get up, however. When I was going through what I shall euphemistically refer to as my “rough patch” a few years back, I completely fucked up my sleep patterns to such a degree that I actually found it impossible to even wake up before 5pm in the afternoon. I was unemployed, alone and shortly to be without a place to call my own, so there really wasn’t very much to get up — or even wake up — for. It was embarrassing to walk into the shop across the road from my flat and be greeted by the guy with the smelly armpits behind the counter with a polite request as to how my day had been when I knew that my day had only started ten minutes ago, despite his working day being almost over. It was frustrating, too, as I felt I should be doing something more productive with my time than sleeping, but, well, I was not exactly of sound mind at the time, and I’m not sure getting up in the morning would have helped all that much at that point.

Thinking back to that time, I should count myself lucky that I’m enjoying a period of stability right now, then. There aren’t all that many things I really need to “worry” about right now — though as anyone who’s ever suffered with anxiety and depression will know, you don’t necessarily need “something” to stress about to feel stressed out. Life at the start of 2014 is pretty good, by all accounts, and hopefully it will only continue to get better as time goes on.

Now, before I pontificate further on matters of the mind, I believe it’s probably time to bid you all farewell. I’ll see you at the start of the new working week. Don’t be late!