breakinglight11 | Entries tagged with sleep

I am a little bit ill. Not very, barely any symptoms, honestly, but definitely ill. I take pretty good care of myself and I guess I have a strong immune system, so I don't often get sick, and when I do it frequently takes the form of a dragging exhaustion with a bit of congestion or a sneeze. That's where I am right now, constantly wanting to sleep and feeling a slight nagging pressure in my face that really doesn't react well to barometric shifts. I've been this way to a very minor degree since Arisia ended.

My life is in a brief easy period for now. The one advantage of having fewer classes and tutoring instead is that I have a lot less day to day work. It makes it less of a problem that I want to sleep all the time. But I'm taking a several-week online pitching class right now that runs on west coast time. It's only two nights a week, but it starts no earlier than eight, and with the workshop component often goes into the wee hours. I'm not a night person at the best of times, much less when I'm sick, and sometimes have to get up at six to get to my North Shore class.

I think it's also made me particularly sensitive to the cold. Even when it's really not so bad out, I've been shivering and kind of struggled to do things. My house has old-fashioned steam heat that makes it a losing battle to try and get above maybe 62 degrees or so, and ridiculously expensive to try. So when I get home, I've gotten into a terrible habit of building a blanket nest around myself, and I don't want to get out of it because it's so much cozier than anywhere else. It means I sort of bed down immediately and any task that requires being up and about gets avoided. But between being so tired and so cold all the time, I've not quite had the energy to break the habit.

It's not a big deal. I'm barely sick, and I need to just be more mindful of wearing more layers. Now that I'm aware of the nesting, I can make better choices. But I need to make sure I eat healthy and get as much sleep as I can, so I can get back some of the strength to deal with these things.

According to Bernie, I am somewhat capable of carrying on a conversation while mostly asleep. Usually it's just head shakes and nods, but pretty often I actually say things. But just because I can form words doesn't mean they make much sense. There are two particularly good things I've told Bernie while mostly asleep. Apparently in both cases he was trying to find a way to climb in around me.

The first time, I informed him, "I'm a globe. I take up aaaaaaaaaaall the space."

And the second was, "Be careful. There's a snake in the hole." I paused a beat. Then, "It's me. I'm the snake."

I have no memory of these, or any of the other weird things I've told him while asleep. But those are the two best ones he's reported. 😁

I'm sure you're all very tired of hearing status updates on my health and schedule by now, but writing things out helps me get my head on straight about what I'm doing and what I should be doing. Slowly feel like I'm getting myself back together. Diet, exercise, and skincare routines have been put back to where they should be. The cold is almost gone; I'm not as sneezy and stuffed up but the tiredness remains. That's still really bugging me, though.

I've always found a pretty definite sundowning effect in my ability to focus and get work done I don't specifically want to do. I'm a morning person in the extreme; I always feel best and am most productive when I rise early, do important stuff first then, and then chill more as it gets later, but in the past few weeks it's been ridiculous. My work schedule for the semester has a couple of ten-hour workdays built into it now, and by the time it's over, it's at a time of day where I am notoriously unproductive even when I'm not burnt. In the last week I've passed out around nine PM four times. I get up at six, so I guess nine hours isn't an unreasonable amount of sleep for my body to want, but it sure means there's not much time to do anything else once I get home from work.

I really want to go back to the writing habits I had before the Mrs. Hawking productions got so intense. But with so little focus by the time I'm free to do it, and so little time before I'm crashing like a ton of bricks for the night, it's not happening. Ah, well. Maybe I need a little more recovery time. I hope by the time this cold is totally out of my system, I won't need so much sleep. Or maybe I should plan on devoting more of the lighter-scheduled days of my work week to writing. Maybe I should just say screw the evenings on Monday and Wednesday and do what I want then. I'm not good at being easy on myself, but sometimes there's just no point in hammering when you're not going to get anything out of it.

Well, now I don't know what's up with me physically. I've been feeling a little generally off recently without really knowing what to attribute it to. I thought maybe I was working out too much, but the most recent snow storm gave me three enforced days of basically doing nothing, and it didn't seem to improve things. I've been eating well again, which is good, and today's fairly intense circuit workout left me feeling great, so that's probably not at issue. I've been sleeping a lot more, usually from 10 to 7, when I used to be crashing around midnight, but I haven't had any easier a time getting up in the morning or feeling much more rested. I had a period of this once a few years ago, and I couldn't explain it then. My best guess is that, with my fairly high-functioning body and immune system, and the fact that I haven't caught an illness in literally years, it's my body's way of fighting something off that I'm not showing outward symptoms of.

Monday saw the onset of an awful migraine, the worst one I've had in a while. I don't get them too much anymore, as my stress level hasn't been nearly as bad as it was a few years ago, and usually they're painful but not that bad. Monday's was terrible, and it hit me with the works: splitting headache, nausea, sensitivity to light and sound. I took a huge pain pill-- the 800 milligram ibuprofens I keep around for just this occasion --moments after I noticed the halo in my eye, but it didn't work at all. I probably ended up puking it up anyway. I should probably just stick my finger down my throat as soon as the nausea hits and speed up the process, as I usually feel at least a bit better after throwing up. I finally was able to sleep after that, but it cost me hours out of my day. And the headache behind my eyes wasn't totally gone until Tuesday night. Yesterday was a tense, upsetting day generally, which I don't really want to get into, but it got me so wound up I didn't relax until probably after my workout this morning.

But mysteriously, now I feel good again. Pain gone, general "off"-ness gone. I really shouldn't complain. I'm lucky to be so strong and healthy and pain-free most of the time. I guess that's why it seems to strange to me when the old machine is slightly out of tune. Just should be all the more grateful for the condition I'm in.

There's this concept called "autonomous sensory meridian response," or ASMR, which describes kind of a pleasant tingling sensation that accompanies deep relaxation. Not everybody seems to experience it, but many people find it's triggered by whispering and other forms of white noise. A lot of people on Youtube have made videos where they roleplay some low-key activity, using guided imagery in a whisper to induce the reaction in the listener.

I only occasionally have the tingling response, but I do find the videos to be good for relaxing, particularly when I can't sleep. Sleep has been a bit funny for me recently-- I have a harder time falling asleep and a harder time waking up, which seems to have started around when my mother died. The videos I like and work best for me are usually have the maker roleplaying giving the listener a massage or facial and describe the process as they go through it. If I had the money I would get those things on a regular basis, but even just the idea of them is relaxing for me. It's a bit silly when you think about it, listening to some random person on the Internet whisper about pretending to give you a skin treatment, but it works for me. And it's a damn sight better than pills or drink or something.

You may have noticed how little I've written lately. Well, that was because for the last week basically any spare moment I had were given over to finished up the writing, printing, and packing of Brockhurst. Festival weekend now has been satisfactorily concluded with all responsibilities delivered.

I plan on spending the next week recovering. I am exhausted more than usual-- NEVER going to run other games the same weekend I'm debuting a new one EVER again. I will be writing up my con report, but otherwise I plan on doing a hell of a lot of flopping, and not a lot that's productive.

I've been tossing an idea around in my mind and wondering whether to go with it or not. I've begun preparations in earnest for going to Intercon, and there's been some working out dates for Festival lately, and that's got me thinking about larp. I've not been able to devote much attention to larping lately, and I really miss it. I haven't written anything new in a while, but I'm nervous about committing myself to a long project when there are so many other things I need to be writing.

It got me thinking about when I participated in Iron GM on a team with Nat, Vik, and Andrew, wherein we produced our odd little gem of a game called Agent Bobo of the Resistance. It was a great experience, for many reasons. This team was great to work with. We made a game like nothing else any of us has ever done before. And it enabled some new work made in a very short period of time, so I could help write a new game without occupying myself too much. It makes me think that it's worth doing again, at least in some form.

I don't think I want to participate in the official one this year. I don't have a team, and I'm more interested in doing something solo right now. The only real trouble with it for me is that I have a really hard time with the all-night aspect of it. I felt bad during the Agent Bobo process that I ended up sleeping more than anyone else just because I COULDN'T keep myself awake.

That's why I'm toying with the idea of challenging myself to Iron GM conditions. Pick a day when I can just stay at home and write a two-hour twelve-player game in a twenty-four hour period. I could choose the start and end hour that worked for me (as in, around my personal sleep schedule) rather than just be stuck with 6PM to 6PM, and I wouldn't have to feel bad if I needed to sleep. I might even have somebody else choose three secret ingredients for me, and act as my challenge-master. They would hold me to my strictures and monitor my progress.

Something to think about. It could be fun.

What's a swamped graduate student to do when she's hankering to write larps but swore she wouldn't take on a project that would take her focus away from graduating? Join up with an Iron GM team at the last minute and bang out a game in a weekend!

I got a call from

natbudin the weekend before last asking if I wanted to be on their team after they lost somebody at the last minute. I figured, what the heck, I've been meaning to try this at some point, why not help out now? The other members of the team were

v_cat and Andrew Sheingold, neither of whom I've written with before, but I was eager to give it a try.

The process was pretty interesting. We got the secret ingredients at 6pm on Saturday, and immediately started brainstorming. We made some progress with an idea, then Vik made the suggestion that before long we should put that thread on hold and spend some time developing a second idea. Not because there was anything wrong with the first thought, but just to see what we came up with instead. And you know what, we ended up going up with our second one. It was more unique, more cerebral, less like your standard "pop larp," as Nat and Vik called it. I can't describe it yet, as I believe the games are confidential until they run at Intercon, but it is like nothing I would have written on my own.

Our writing went pretty damn well. I struggled a bit with the all-night aspect of it. I'm much more of a morning person. I couldn't deal with less than four and a half hours or so of sleep, which was more than anybody else got. But at least I managed to stay up enough to get my share of the work done. Everybody was really contributing, coming up with good material and good writing, and we had a good working dynamic where we could debate ideas and criticize constructively. I was proud of us. We even handed our final product in over an hour before the final 6pm deadline Sunday night.

This game is a weird game, not only the weirdest I've ever written, but the weirdest Nat has ever written, which is saying something! We decided that Iron GM was a good opportunity to do something really experimental, something with a good chance of being a spectacular failure because of the players not getting it, not getting into it, or it just being too difficult a story to represent in the form of a larp. The fact that Iron GM games have pretty much random players and random casting likely won't help. But I've written seven successful games at this point, most of them fairly safe in the sense that if I wrote them well, they were guaranteed to turn out. I was ready for an artistic risk.

We'll see how it goes. If we're lucky, it'll get scheduled in the earlier slot on Sunday at Intercon and I will be able to be present for the running of it. (Break a Leg is running in the later slot.) I shall be fascinated to see how it goes. We also bid it for Festival, where people will be able to self-select into it and we'll be able to send out casting questionnaires, so I think that will be a slightly more representative run of how it really works. But here's to my very first time as part of risky game concept! We'll see how spectacularly we fail!

Now that Mrs. Chadwick is taken care of, I have a little bit less to worry about. Last week, with having to finalize show preparations on top of having an unusually high number of errands that necessitated driving all over creation, was pretty exhausting, and now I am a little burnt out. Of course, burnt out has been kind of my default state in the last year or so. I don't know what it means that I'm twenty-five years old and feel tired all the time, but it's probably not a good sign.

The root of it all is probably stress. I've always had a hard time striking a balance between feeling active and productive and feeling overloaded and overwhelmed. Among other problems, I'm not sure I really have any good way to manage my stress other than just kind of ignoring it. My usual technique when I feel too burnt out is to lay around and not do anything except maybe watch some TV I've seen a million times. I guess that's not terrible-- could be a lot worse, like stress-eating or drinking or drugs --but it means basically becoming a braindead lump. How to people manage stress? Meditation? Worth a try. Exercise? Well, I can always use more exercise. I guess I also tend to sleep too much when I'm stressed, but that's not a good habit either. I could use a better way to handle it, since I doubt it's going away anytime soon.

Final weekend of Sherlock Holmes performances begin tonight. In an effort to ward off any more debilitating ill health episodes, I am working to stay calm and hydrated. I mean, it's very unlikely that I'll get another migraine, this week has been weary but way less stressful than the last, but I really don't want to deal with that again.

My parents are coming up to see the show tonight and tomorrow. I'm really happy they can make it. They're even bringing my brother and his girlfriend on Saturday. They missed Merely Players due to scheduling issues, and I haven't acted in a show in a couple of years now, so that's special for me.

Also, yesterday I got to see Erik Potter, Tom Heller, and Lily Hwang, in town for their fifth-year Brandeis reunion. They made a campfire in Sachar Woods and invited me to hang out with them there last night. It was wonderful to see them again, after all that time. Erik actually lives around here anyway, so I need to make an effort to see him more.

If only I weren't feeling so tired. All week I have felt draggy, despite taking naps and going to bed early. Not sure what's wrong, though I know it's been going on since the show ended last weekend. I've even been eating right and exercising a lot. I'm used to bouncing back pretty quickly, but whatever this is, it's lingered. I guess I'll just have to push through.

*Sigh* Just got a bunch of new responsibilities given to me at work, which is nice and all, but are accompanied by other changes that are kind of inconvenient. Spent a lot of today in the position of either wait for instructions and come off as not proactive or helpful enough, or try to use my own best judgment and risk handling it wrong. Hmmm, either be a useless cow, or screw up? Yay, my favorite. The really annoying thing is that my work hours just got moved up from 9AM-2PM to 8AM-1PM. Not super-pleased about that, but it's not that big a deal. I'm just a baby who doesn't want to wake up an hour earlier. At least my work period will end earlier without losing any hours. I do like finishing early rather than late. Tomorrow will be the first day of it, so I'd bet remember to reset my morning alarm.

Am now back from my lovely weekend of larping at SLAW. This was kind of my weekend of "games I am not sure about," since in an effort to expand my larping horizons I signed up for all games that were not to my typical inclining. By and large this tactic was a success, and I had a very good weekend overall.

Friday night Charlotte, April, and I all played in Martha Stewart's Guide to Interdimensional Summoning (and Basting a Turkey.) Fortunately Charlotte had reminded me just before the game that it actually took place at a party and not at a business conference like I originally assumed, so at the last minute I changed my costuming plan. I thought I looked quite nice, wearing my black asymmetric cocktail dress with my white gold anniversary necklace, the nearly-matching silver infinity earrings, silver pumps with the perfectly-matching silver bag, and my silver-gray pashmina over my shoulders. Though I had a good time in it, this game was not to my taste. It was a game purely about schmoozing, with most interactions conducted solely for their own sake, which is totally fine, I just tend to prefer a little bit more plot. I did end up bonding with the demon who had been my childhood imaginary friend, but I did it mostly as a favor to him-- he needed it and I didn't, which I think may have been a common thing about demons and humans in the game. Glad I tried the game, had a nice time, but it was not exactly what I was hoping for.

Saturday morning I drove Charlotte and Ryan in early so that they could play in their morning games. I had nothing in that slot, so I decided to go cruise a nearby thrift store. It was a very nice, well-organized Goodwill, and there were lots of stuff to choose from. Unfortunately most of the things that caught my eye weren't in my size, but I find it amusing how often even in the thrift stores my eye is drawn to items from Express. Very frequently I see something I like the cut and styling of among lots of random pieces on the rack, and when I check the tag, Express is the maker with surprising frequency. I ended up taking home a fantastic black sweater with a drapey fold-over collar, two dressy knee-length skirts, one with an orange and white cloudy pattern and the other with swirls in various shades of red, and the neatest thing of all, a low-sided oval pan with a copper bottom and a stainless steel interior. It needs polishing, but this pan that looks just like it is selling for hundreds of dollars, and I snagged this one for four. Score! I'm not sure what you would call such a thing-- it's oval kind of like a gratin pan but only has one long handle, and the sides are too low for a saute pan --but I look forward to shining it up and cooking with it, which will promptly require shining it again. :-)

Pleased with my haul, I returned to WPI to grab lunch and get into costume for The Sound of Drums. I wasn't sure if it was going to be my cup of tea, and I was fairly certain I would like Two Hours in London, but natbudin had highly recommended it and I trust the man's judgment. So, in the spirit of the Try New Games weekend, I went for it. My costume wasn't terrible, but it was weaker than my usual standard. Despite playing a sixty-plus-year-old, I did end up wearing my brown tribal-looking bikini with my brown pashmina tied around my waist like a skirt, and Charlotte kindly lent me her huge patterned green scarf to wrap around my shoulders. This mostly concealed all the decidedly-not-sixty-year-old body in the bikini, and I made some attempt to paint age makeup on my face, but I didn't white my hair and overall looked pretty much like the vain twenty-something I am. Also, I think I lost my brown and white headband scarf at the gamespace afterward, which I am annoyed with myself about.

But the game itself was excellent. The world is very full and well-thought-out. I loved my character and was incredibly busy throughout the whole game. I also had great interactions with Susan, who was my brilliant-but-mad younger sister, and Ryan, who was the troubled outsider with the haunting in his soul. I even got to use my badass spiritual strength to beat up a fallen god! It was awesome. The culture they built, with its ways and its norms that were so different and unusual, was really well-made. There was one small instance of "Christianity as the great bogeyman of non-mainstream living" that irked me, but otherwise I thought they did a really nice job of establishing the foreign people. There was also lots of interesting story told, which pretty much makes any game for me. Overall, I think this was my favorite larp of the weekend, and the one I was most glad that I took a chance on. Congrats to Tory and Lily for making it!

Saturday night was Clarence. By this point I was really dragging, energy-wise. This weekend marks the third week in a row of little sleep and poor eating, and I think I am reaching my limit. Luckily for me, Clarence is a game that is impossible to screw up, and I was playing an AGM so I could afford to be reactive rather than active. Fortunately, others were doing a fantastic job of pushing the game along. This run was blackbagged and carried off over the shoulder by electric_d_monk, whose portrayal of the fanatically German-nationalist GM Bucher drove the events by sheer force of personality. By the end of the run, we had vampires passing on their nationalities as well as their vampirism, resulting in bronzite's General and rigel's Carmilla being determined to be genetically perfect Aryans who of course must then go on to spawn the Master Race. With the use of the time accelerator to hasten their growth, soon we had six little Ubermensches prancing about named after the Von Trapp children singing songs from The Sound of Music. And naturally, these unstoppable German supermen went on to take over the world and some surrounding planets, leaving Brewer as Kaiser of the Earth and Mars. It was a typically insane run, but the birth of the Master Race, I think, was a uniquely amusing touch.

"Allow me to explain zee rules of Der Kriegspiel."

Sunday lightgamer was nice enough to let me ride over with him and twilighttremolo. I was signed up for In the Jungle that day, the final game of the sort I wasn't sure what I'd think of. But I like the work of emp42ress and simplewordsmith, so I wanted to see what it was like. My costume was like most of my others this weekend was a little half-assed, since I tend not to keep worn-out clothes around, but I settled on an outfit that when my parents last saw me in it told me I looked like a bum. I figured that would work. It is a game about hobos, a pure conversation exercise where we do nothing more than talk to each other in character. The game was at bare minimum cast, but it was a good one, including myself, natbudin, rigel, nyren, beholdsa, and electric_d_monk. Being in it with such good larpers helped a lot, keeping the converstion interesting and helping ease some of the awkwardness I was feeling about just having to spitball. Not something I'm certain I want to do again any time soon, but I enjoyed the experiment in this instance and I'm glad I decided to give it a try.

Now I am exhausted. I have been going at a breakneck pace for the last three weeks and I simply can't go any more. I have been kind of hoping that if I have one day where I sleep really well and eat properly it will fix my weariness and the mess my digestive system has been in, but I think I need a more consistent effort to really fix things up. Wednesday I will be going home for Thanksgiving with my brother, and I'm hoping to reset myself over that break with healthy eating and enough rest. I have things I need to get done in the near future, such as writing more Resonance characters and getting out the casting questionnaire for The Stand, but as cool as my activites have been, I think my body needs a bit more of a break before it will feel back to normal again.

For the first time in days, today I woke feeling somewhat refreshed. I don't know if I actually slept better or if I'm finally catching back up, but it's good to not get up feeling almost as exhausted as I was when I went to sleep. Still, I plan on taking it easy today. My only responsibility is to see that Jared gets to the airport okay. It was a lovely visit, and so nice to have him around for the show. I'm very pleased with how well we used our time together, him being helpful and supportive when I had to be at the show, and spending quality time together when I didn't. He even helped me with all the chores I neglected in favor of build and rehearsals this past week, so now I am almost caught back up. With any luck he will be back again soon, so I am in a fairly positive mood.

Had my first meeting with the Resonance team last night. I was given the whole rundown of the game and how it works, and I am very impressed with the concept. It was described by emp42ress as a "choose-your-own-character amnesia game," which means that we won't know what kinds of characters will end up being in the game until the players choose them, and then "remember" more and more about who they are as they make their choices. And in addition to being experimental, it's going to be intense-- the storyline is a real emotional wringer. As always, I am honored to be asked to work with them-- they are such talented larp writers, and they encourage me to expand my horizons into nontraditional, experimental styles that I probably would not have attempted on my own. The writing process for this game is different than any previous one, so I'm excited to try my hand at it and see how I do.

Finally Winter's Tale has done. I couldn't be happier with how the process went. I remember Caesar's tech week going very well, but this for Winter's Tale was even better, due to a confluence of lucky circumstances, an abundance of technically skilled people, and the strong sense of camaraderie that has enabled everyone to work so well together. This is certainly one of the best-looking shows we've ever had. The set is gorgeous, the costumes are strong, the lights are more beautiful and complex than anything we've had before, and we worked better together than we have on build for any other show. Even our strike went beautifully.

Our actors were amazing. Plesser is fantastic, bringing humanity and soul to his character, growing in nuance with every show. To se him working to build a performance unlike anything he's done before was fascinating. Gigi has this beautiful quiet dignity that she brings to roles, a refusal to be compromised and to cave in to adversity. Her firm, upright stillness makes an excellent counterpoint to everything else that happens onstage, giving her an unassailable serenity that draws the eye. Emma's sweetness as Perdita makes me glad to have her in the club. Lenny is unbelievable, funny and fascinating as Autolycus and easily the most fun part of the show. She and Jenna as Clown, who was clever and hilarious, really stole the show. Chris brought warmth and charm to Florizel. Nicole's Paulina was skillful, intense, and powerfully captured the eye. Nati rose admirably to the challenge of his difficult character. And of course, for pure facility as an actress, none of us equal Caitlin. She is so natural, so believable, so talented that she makes it look effortless. Her voice is powerful and conveys so much, her body is held so exactly, her movement is so dynamic and illustrative. To see her filling the stage while so many of the rest of us struggle to keep from physically stagnating leaves me in awe. She is the best of us in so many ways, and I admire her so much.

Now I am extraordinarily tired. I am incredibly happy with how things went, but now I need to crash and recharge. Congratulations to Steph, who has done such an amazing job bringing everything together, and now is inducted into the sacred society of HTP directors.

Halloween was a smashing success, filled with good friends and delicious food. I was cooking literally all day with the gracious help of

katiescarlett29, and produced five tasty fall-themed dishes-- pear and parsnip puree, squash soup, cornbread, gingerbread, and pumpkin pie --in addition to a spiral-sliced ham that was even more delicious than I hoped it would be. The costumes were also fantastic, highlights including

in_water_writ and

1takejohnny's Harley Quinn and the Joker,

morethings5 as Dexter Morgan,

electric_d_monk in the full regalia of a Victorian countess,

marigumi and Matt as Hit-Girl and Kickass, and a Princess Bride-themed group that culiminated in

lightgamer-as-Inigo and

nennivian-as-Rugen's climactic duel to the death. Honorable mention goes to Plesser, in Scooby-Doo-themed scrubs, as Nurse Not-a-Slut (Even on Halloween), RN. And special thanks to

nennivian for decorating the living room. :-)

But now I am well-contented, but ridiculously tired. I was up late straightening up afterward, and had to get up for work this morning. Now I am seriously dragging. I would love to get a nap in this afternoon, but today I have errands to run, family obligations, and rehearsal in the evening, so I may just have to soldier on.

My sleeping patterns just won't seem to settle into what I want for my twenty-something working life. I am no longer obnoxiously sleeping from sundown to sunup the way I was for a while there, thankfully, but now my sleep patterns have discovered a new weirdness. I am very prone to midday naps from which I wake with something that feels like a dehydration headache, and I consistently hit a hard energy crash around nine or ten at night that threatens to drag me off to sleep. I really, really don't want to fall back into that absurdly early sleep schedule. The weird thing is, if I push through this crash I usually shake off the extreme sleepiness by eleven or midnight, and can stay up comfortably until about one or so, but it's very tough to not let myself just pass out when that heaviness hits. I really dislike being so controlled by my sleep schedule, especially since most days I tend to get a decent seven hours a night. It's so frustrating because I've always been such a healthy person with comfortably regular habits until the last year or so.

One of my goals for the summer has been to work at taking better physical care of myself. It has been tough keeping up healthy habits when feeling so drained, so overwhelmed, and so depressed as I frequently have. So I have been taking advantage of having more free time to devote some of it to establishing healthier habits in the hopes of easing some of that bad feeling. Here's how that has been going so far.

Nutrition:
For a long time being busy and weary kept me buying easily accessible junk food. I am blaming the extra weight around my midsection to the frequent lunches I made out of a block of gruyere and a sleeve of Ritz crackers. I am working much harder to cook for myself on a regular basis, rather than just when I have dinner parties. In fact, my next week-long challenge to myself may be to prepare all meals at home. I have started making myself simple four-ingredient salads for lunches and sometimes dinners, which I am finding a lot more satisfying than I thought I would. I've also started trying to make a habit out of having breakfast by buying yogurts in bulk and keeping them in the fridge at work. Coke remains my lingering indulgence; it may be wiser to just cut it out.

Verdict: Much better, but not totally there yet.

Sleep:
Tough to say. Recently I've had a lot of problems sleeping through the night, leaving me not feeling rested in the mornings and crashing into bed stupid-early at night. I've experienced some small improvement not waking up during the night, perhaps because of the better eating and exercising. I'd like to be able to stay up a little later at night-- Jared and I have a deal that I'll try to stay up later and he'll try to go to bed earlier to mesh our schedules more --while still getting a full night's sleep. I think since I haven't been waking up so much I've been better able to get up and haven't felt so badly-rested, but it's still not perfect.

Verdict: somewhat better, and every little bit helps.

Skin:
Ah, in this department things have gotten better lots and gotten better fast. I switched to a nightly apricot facial scrub and an oil-free moisturizer, and my facial skin is doing better than it has in ages; I am looking so much clearer and more even-toned. I still have a lot of micro-zits on my forehead (tiny little acne bumps that are tough to see except up close) but as I said, I have also been taking care to moisturize the rest of my skin, and I was shocked at how quickly it got so soft. On my legs, it even makes it so I have to shave less often before the hair is visible. I also was trying to keep my nails in better condition, and I was mostly succeeding until the intensity of Labor Wars

Verdict: vast, immediate improvement.

Fitness:
This is the category that I have made the least progress in. My goal is to do either an abdominal or a cardio workout six days a week, and for a couple of weeks I was pretty good about it. Then this past week game, with all the gaming and the preparation for Labor Wars, and it went to hell. I don't feel like I've lost any weight yet, which disappoints me; I really want to sleek my tummy back out. I just got to buckle back down. It's a tough habit for me to get in because I don't enjoy it at all, except for the shape it gives me. But until I do this regularly for a reasonable period of time, I am not going to get rid of this little pooch on my gut.

Verdict: disappointing, must establish good habits for extended period of time.

So, small improvement, not enough to satisfy me yet. The only thing to do is keep with it, because that's the only way I'll get the results I want.

Lately getting going in the morning has been a lot harder than usual; again I blame the not sleeping well. But that has meant that getting dressed has taken a lot more effort, so I haven't been doing as good a job of it. My very conscious efforts to dress as stylishly as possible have been a bit too much for me, so things like experimenting and even accessorizing just haven't been happening. But today I actually managed to assemble something that looks really sharp. I'm wearing one of my favorite shirts, the fitted pink-striped one with the silver appliqued design on it, khakhi slacks, black leather belt, my anniversary necklace, matching silver earrings, and, as a fun and unusal touch, my silver dress heels. I feel like I look really good today, and that makes me feel good. Maybe I should spend the precious extra spoons in the mornings and go back dressing carefully; it might help me feel a little better about myself. Could use that lately.

Had the first read through for Love's Labor's Lost last night. It went well, if perhaps a little less professionally than I like, and I think i will enjoy working with this cast. I've had heavier rehearsal schedules than I'll have for this show, but even though rehearsals happen every other night I'll still need to be at pretty much all of them. I will be playing Longaville, one of the king's men who swears off women in order to pursue scholarship for a year, but ends up breaking his vow when he falls in love with Maria, one of the ladies attending the princess of France. Yet again I am cross-cast. :-) No matter, I enjoy the challenge, and it's a fairly decent-sized role. I'm still trying to get a handle on what I think I'll do with him, but I've got plenty of time to figure it out. There will be three weekends of performances, 7/24-25, 7/31-8/1, and 8/7-8.

Long weekend coming up. I don't have to work on Monday due to Memorial Day, but even with the extra day it will be busy. These will be my last couple of days with Jared before he goes home for the summer; Monday he'll be flying home. Also I'll be taking Bernie to the airport so he can go to a work conference in California. I don't want either of them to go; it's going to be a lonely few days. But on Sunday

blendedchaitea will be moving into Elsinore for the summer, and I'm very excited about that. I look forward to helping her get settled, and then having her for company. So I'll be trying to keep busy, which helps keep my spirits up.

Some thoughts on things I am planning on pursuing over the summertime this year.

Budgeting will need to be focused on. Though actually, one goal I actually have more or less met over the last year is keeping my finances in order. The old budget has been and will continue to be pretty tight, but I'm making it work, covering my bills and actually managing to put a little away. I'm now even closer to my in-case-of-emergency savings goal! Since our new lease is starting next month, I have been carefully getting ready for the expense of handing over first month-last month payment. I am extremely annoyed, however, by the fact that my landlord will not allow me to just roll over my security deposit from last year. Instead, he wants to give it back to me and have me pay a new one. Okay, this wouldn't be so bad if he could get it together to return it to me before the new one is due. If I remember correctly from last year, we got the old one back eventually, but not in a prompt manner, because frankly this guy doesn't really do anything in a prompt manner. I am budgeted and prepared to hand over first month-last month, but digging up an ADDITIONAL security deposit is going to pose a serious hardship. I just don't want to cause any trouble, so as unhappy as it makes me, I'm just going to go with it. I know I will get the old one back, but still, I dislike the notion of having twice what I owe in security handed over for any period of time.

I got into the play I auditioned for! I will be playing Longaville, one of the prince's men who swears off love for scholarship but finds he can't keep to it, in the Gazebo Players production of Love's Labor's Lost. Tonight is the first read through and I'm excited, though I have to miss a Labor Wars meeting to attend. :-( I will in the future carefully manage my schedule so this does not happen again. I think it will be good for me to have a show to keep me busy and creative this summer.

I must get back into the habit of working out. I'm barely working out at all these days, and the squishiness is starting to show it. My belly is turning to mush and my thighs are becoming monstrous. It's easier for me to keep to a workout schedule over the summer with my increased free time and my decreased responsibilities, so perhaps I can actually make a good habit of it. I will have to overcome the challenge of my sleeping badly makes it hard to get up to work out in the mornings, and yet I've never had much success making myself work out at any other time.

I would like to restart my Burn Notice campaign. We haven't played in a very long time, but I would enjoy getting back into it, if not on a regular basis, then at least somewhat frequently. Hell, we even still have a storyline to finish. I honestly have difficulty coming up with more and more story so quickly, but I liked running the game and had a great time spending it with the players. I'll have to go about figuring that out.

I must find a doctor. I recently got new health insurance, so I've got to find someone who accepts it, but honestly I haven't had a primary care provider since going away to college. I don't often need one, and when I was in school I just used the health center. But I've been convined to get checked out about how badly I've been sleeping lately, and my feet seem to be hurting an awful lot. To be honest I don't expect a doctor to be able to do much about any of the things that have been troubling me, since I think most of it's due to stress, but Jared and my mother are convined I'm falling apart, so I guess it can't hurt on the off-chance there's something concrete medical care can do.

So there's a starting point to begin my summer with. Let's see how it goes.

I found out today that my mother woke up to a wet nose snuffling against hers. :-) That Merlin generates the most interesting news!

Today turned out to be significantly busier than I expected it to be, but overall was quite pleasant. This summer, since nennivian and aurora_knight will not be moving in yet, we will have a couple of subletters, once of which is the lovely blendedchaitea. She will be going home to Los Angeles for two weeks before she officially comes to stay with us, so today I helped her gather up her dorm room, pack it into our respective cars, and store in against the wall downstairs until she needs it again. It turned out all that carrying was one hell of a workout; I must have walked miles with my arms loaded with heavy stuff. My muscles feel pretty ripped up, but it's actually a pretty good feeling, since it's been so long since I got a real workout.

In regards to my personal housing-related interests and responsibilities, I got one out of the two communications I was hoping for today. I was told that bronzite's furniture is supposed to be delivered between 8AM and 12PM tomorrow. I'm glad to know, but that's a bit earlier than I was hoping; it's earlier than I get up for work. Ah, well, God knows with how I've been sleeping I'll be up by that time anyway. As to the other communication, I didn't get the e-mail I was hoping for saying I can pick up the table. I'm hoping it will come tomorrow in time for me to make the trip to get it.

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All Eyes on Me

"Do you know why heroes boast? Because it makes them brave."

Entries tagged with sleep

Health whining

The globe and the snake

Always-sleeping beauty

Little kinks in the gears

ASMR for relaxing

Festival over, now collapse

My own private Iron GM

My first Iron GM

Weary me

Last weekend of Sherlock

Work whiny

SLAW 2010 Report

First Resonance meeting

Close of Winter's Tale

Halloween: success!

New weird sleep pattern

Self-care progress report

Actually looking nice today

Goals and tasks for the summer

I am a magical housing elf