Vacation Days!

 I've got a week off from work because apparently I've been working mostly non-stop. I've accrued a great deal of vacation time this year. I wonder if maybe I've been going through emotional turmoil so I've been pouring myself into my work. I don't think that's it exactly. More like there's no pattern to my life and I've been defaulting to the only one. Not very original of me...so I'm gonna do something about it. 

Not sure what exactly yet, but definitely something. 

When I'm at work (and I'm sure this is not an experience exclusive to me), I think of all the things that I could be accomplishing INSTEAD if I just weren't at my job. The peat bog of my mind spits up small and large projects, perfectly preserved bog bodies of productivity, where they stare grimly at me. 

I imagine this dynamic version of myself that I could be, accomplishing great things, if only I weren't sitting at my desk making money for someone else.

And then when I get home, I am drained, forgetful, unmotivated, complacent. I suspect this is a feature of life, and not a bug. 

SO I MADE A LIST!

When I was at work last week, and the Ghosts of Unrequited Tasks floated down hallways and rattled the windows, I wrote them down. I have them, for now, trapped. Today, I woke up and told my brain I was going to work just like normal. (Brains, by themselves, are not intelligent. I forget that all the time. Our minds like to follow the most often-trod paths of the exotic jungle of the Self, and if you can just get them started on something, it's much easier to nudge them onto a byway, down alleys and up aqueducts, all the unexplored regions. 

That's how it is for me now, anyway. I used to be crazy, which was a kind of superpower because I required absolutely no logical reason for doing any given thing, other than it might be interesting.

I've become far too practical in my old age. For me, I mean. 

Writing was not on the official list, but I've been meaning to do that too. Maybe try for another Scary Short Stories October. That was fun and with this week off I could get ahead of it. 

Oh yeah, this is all coming together. 

ocean sounds

Last night, I kept waking up and hearing the ocean. It's a tricky thing, because I'm not sure if I was really hearing the ocean or only dreaming that I was hearing the ocean while I was in that middle space betwixt sleep and wake. It wasn't unpleasant; I like the sound of the ocean. I just kept getting stuck in this loop of thinking "that sounds like the ocean am I at the ocean I shouldn't be at the ocean it was raining last night maybe it's the rain that sounds like ocean zzzz" and then I'm lulled back to full sleep by the soothing ocean sounds. 

When I woke up, I inspected my fan. (I sleep with a fan on.) Nothing unusual. 

There was an unusual amount of sand on the floor, though. 

Weather Alert

A half an hour before sunset today, I felt restless..A slight melancholy had been settling upon me, like a veil made of chiffon and spiderweb. A crack of thunder shattered the stillness and rattled the windows of the house. A monsoon storm was upon us. The lightning flashed and rent the sky and the rain pummeled the earth. "Perfect," I thought, and I grabbed my keys and rode out into the storm. 

I turned up the music and drove.

books and late nights

I'm up late reading again. Okay, that late but certainly later than I intended.  My dreams this past week have been tumultuous. Important people, beloved friends, in trouble or in need and I'm there but I can't help. So, bad dreams. 

Less so since I started reading again. It's been...maybe three months since I've read a book. That's too long. Yes, I listen to short stories every night, and some of them are very long indeed, actual novels sometimes, and yet it's not the same. 

Listening for me is not the same. These single sentences at a time. Different. Looking at a page of text in my hands is an act of osmosis; I'm reading one line but the lines I've read before it are still sinking into my mind and the lines coming up next that I haven't consciously read yet have still been glimpsed, at the edge of my vision, and the coming words are not an absolute surprise because they've been sitting on the windowsill like a cooling blueberry pie and the smell has reached my nose. 

Something like that, but not exactly. 

It doesn't happen when I'm listening to books. Which I believe in wholeheartedly; I do not weigh their values against each other. 

If I could sink into the words, I would. For a little while anyway. It sounds like great fun. 

*Here's some calm, peaceful, slow, bliss, tender, gentle inspired by your listening on Tuesdays at night*

Allegedly. I do have a modicum of control over my Tuesday nights and apparently this is what I gravitate towards. If there's a hammock, for example, I'll gravitate towards that too. 

Whoa, where did this choir come from? You know how sometimes you're wandering through a dark forest and then a choir starts singing all around you? I'm not easy to faze, generally, and this threw me a bit. 

Ultimately, I decided it probably had nothing to do with me, and I pressed on. I still hear them now, fading in the distance. Of course, they could be keeping up with me and just singing more softly to make it seem like they're fading into the distance. Choirs are crafty, sometimes. Do not underestimate their aural abilities. 

They're probably not doing that.

This seems like a good time to go to sleep. 

I keep meaning to write. Every night as I'm falling asleep I mutter a curse at myself. There's no reason I can't. Gotta find the reason I don't. 

There was an article today on NPR's website about the "transformative power" of keeping a daily journal. 

I didn't read it.

But it did get me thinking, so probably that's why I'm here now. 

"Transformative" is an interesting choice of words. Value-neutral, I'd say. That's the danger of the daily journal. Memory is memory, but writing is composing, editing, ommission. It competes with the memory. Usurps it, sometimes. 

It's dangerous to run around thinking you're the hero. Everything costs, everything has ramifications that we don't get to see. 

I think I've been decent about journaling about my regrets, or when I've been an ass, or selfish, or completely wrong. 

I think. I'm sure I've left out a lot. 

I've gotten really into dehydrating food. Mushrooms, mostly. Dehydrated oyster mushrooms grill up real nice and in a tortilla it *almost* reminds me of carne asada. 

Oh, another thing I've been doing is trying to sleep better by avoiding light. Not all light, of course, but again on NPR, a sleep scientist was talking about one of the factors in good sleep being controlling your exposure to light as you wind down and get ready to sleep. 

I don't know that I'm particularly sensitive to it (it seems to vary wildly among people) but I have been using only low, red lights in my room. Like now, I'm writing on my phone, on Night Mode which is supposed to filter out any blue light or whatever wavelengths that scare away all the melatonin. The rest of the room is bathed in an eerie red glow. 

It reminds me of being in the Army, furtively writing letters after Lights Out, in the glow of my red flashlight. 

Just like old times. Except I don't know who I'm writing to, I suppose. My transformed self maybe. 

I wonder what I'll transform into. 

and then

Handpan music and thoughtfulness. 

Sometimes my possessions feel like barnacles stuck on the ponderous sea mammal of my mind. 

I like looking at houses for sale online, when all the rooms are empty and there's just... space. It's appealing to me in a way I don't really understand. 

Maybe because stuff distracts me. I don't know. Peace is an empty room, except for a  mattress and a bunch of books. 

Then the other part of my brain knows it's not that big a deal; that what I don't like is feeling that I should be more organized, more spartan, utilitarian, and less distracted. 

Then I wonder what I would do otherwise? And I remind myself that there isn't a perfect time, or the perfect conditions, to do anything and to look for the things that bring you closer. 

Or something like that.