Sleeping strangely

I’ve been trying to “document” my actual sleep schedule in iCal lately, and … it doesn’t look good. Going to sleep after 5 or 6AM all week, and alternately waking up at 9 or 10AM with days where I sleep until 2 or 4PM. Long sleep, short sleep, long sleep, short sleep, if I stick to the pattern I won’t get to sleep for another three hours and I’ll be up before 10.

And I haven’t been accomplishing much, either. I’ve been working a lot on this experimental comic, but I just hit a couple of roadblocks. For one, I’m at a part I wrote that requires me to do a fair amount of algebra to figure out how to code it, and I keep coming up with the wrong results. My brain just isn’t in tune with algebra right now, I think. Another is that I looked at it so far on a Wintel PC and found … that a lot of the things I programmed don’t work correctly because WinIE doesn’t accurately interact with JavaScript. That is, sometimes it says there was an onMouseOut event when there wasn’t, sometimes it reports an onClick as an onMouseOver and onMouseOut both, and sometimes it behaves correctly. So some of the things I set up so that the user has to mouse over and off of certain images in certain patterns to follow the script of the story just suddenly jump ahead as though they had done so, whether they have or not. So, that’s a challenge.

And there have been abrasives problems… new ones not being as effective as expected… and I forgot to pick up some more of the ones I know work when I was in town the other day… so I’m going to pick some more up tomorrow when I go see Hidalgo, but … what about before that? What work can I get done? I guess some hand-sanding, some work with the less-effective abrasives. Whatever. I’ve decided to change from a “small table” to a coffee table. Which drives up the price and the sale-ability, in theory, without much changing the work involved.

I don’t know. If I could somehow get paid for not feeling very good, I’d be set for life. If not feeling like facing the day, if being depressed enough to forget to get out of bed, if prefering the night because I don’t have to deal with anyone… if these things could be turned into income, I’d be set. A couple of hours ago, I though about going downstairs and working on my sanding.

I’m thinking of going down now.

Heck, whether I’m staying awake up here or down there, I’ve got to build another fire. At least if I go down there and work I know I’ll be working on something that will almost definitely pay out. If I stay up here and work … on my comics, which no one even pays a quarter for, on my novels which no one wants to buy, on transcribing my high-school stories and poems which no one cares about at all, that’s work on things that … may never produce income. I could even get my everything out and try to work on painting, but … I sold all of 3 paintings last year. With this furniture, there is a matter of getting word out that it’s available, but there is a known market for it up here… they say.

The economy has been in such poor shape since Bush took over that every business I know of in the area has been hit hard, established market or not. Who knows what this year will be like. My dad keeps saying that no matter what happens to the economy, the rich will always be rich, so they’re the ones we’re building for, but … I don’t know. I suppose I just have to have faith.

And I do.

I have more faith that the furniture will sell than any of the other things I want to do. The writing, the painting, the comic-ing, any of it. And at least there’s SOME creativity in the furniture building. I don’t want to buy and re-sell things on eBay. I don’t want to work retail. I don’t want to manufacture endless duplicates of something. Original pieces, that appeals to me.

Maybe it’s because once I finish a piece, it’s over, it’s done with, I never have to work on it again. It’s like tech support. One of the few things I really liked about taking tech support calls was that most of the time, you get a call, you solve the issue, the call is done and you never think about it again. There’s nothing to bring home at the end of the day, usually not even stress, because you don’t have any pending projects weighing on you. That was nice, until Realink decided to … stop.. I’m not talking about them.

Anyway, yeah. The way my mind works, I lose the drive to work on most individual creative projects after only a week or two (which is way up from what it was even 24 months ago) and being able to start something new is a great relief. Six months was just about too, too long for the Mouse Project before I stopped caring about it anymore. I can feel myself getting tired of this experimental comic I’m working on, and I ran out of steam on Anyone But You in … like, two hours. I’ll see if I can’t get back into that at some point. Or not. It doesn’t really have a story. Maybe I’ll go the easy route. Draw one panel, copy it 60 times, and just change the text and facial expressions.

Anyway, it’s almost 3AM, I’m going dowanstairs, I’m working until 5 or 6AM, or until I’m too tired to work, whichever seems the most reasonable. I do have to get to sleep at some point, so I can wake up, go to town, do some shopping, pick up Heath from school, and watch Hidalgo. But for now, sanding.

Sleep? Strange thing.

I don’t seem to know where it’s supposed to go, to start and stop, in my life.

Oh well.

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Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.