Cafepress started offering custom light switch covers yesterday, so today, I’ve got one.
The Truth/Beauty lightswitch cover will help you to reconsider what that little switch is really doing for you. It is especially useful when installed near mirrors. Order them for use wherever you have light switches.
Humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.
– Marie Curie, scientist, Nobel laureate (1867-1934)
It’s weird. It’s only 4AM and I’m getting tired. Being sure I’m up at 7AM in time to go to [unnamed all-day event I’m attending today] is why I took modafinil in the first place. The idea is that it’s easier to stay awake than to wake up early. Now, based on my previous extended uses of the drug, there’s a strong correlation to not eating right or at the right times, but (of course) I haven’t felt hungry, and actually I feel really really full after a few cookies almost an hour ago. So if I still feel full in another 15, 20 minutes, I’m going to eat something proper anyway. I have some leftovers from dinner last night.
. . .
Okay, that was like, an hour ago. I don’t feel full anymore, but I don’t feel nearly as sleepy. And I haven’t got up to eat yet. I’m writing a review of sorts in another tab and watching The Pelican Brief. Which reminds me…
I noticed a couple of hours ago, while watching Primal Fear, that I don’t much like ‘lawyer movies’ – that is, movies based on Grisham’s novels and those like them. Which, I think, both of these movies are… which might be why they’re next to each other in my Netflix queue. I did some stream of consciousness queueing when I first signed up, adding 500 movies just by riding the waves of titles and ‘similar titles’ and ‘recommended titles’ and ‘titles with something alike’ and so on, and except for inserting the occasional new release or personal recommendation to the top of my queue (such as Downfall, which came out on DVD last week and which I didn’t get a chance to see in theatres), I pretty much let that random-like stream of movies flow in to meet me.
But I’ve got off course. I don’t mean to say I dislike these lawyer-type movies; some of them are quite entertaining, as movies. But it occurred to me that … well, I can’t think of one I ever liked so much that I bought it. And I didn’t trust my memory, so I went through all 300 or so of my DVDs to check, and not one of them is one of these lawyer-type movies. I know I don’t like the judicial system that much, but this is a weird pattern. Of all the lawyer/trial based movies I’ve seen, I can’t think of one I’d like to watch again or own.
Which, upon quick reflection I thought might relate to why I didn’t like Chicago much.
But then again, after realising the problem and watching Richard Gere doing the same song and dance in Primal Fear that he did so much more ostentatiously in Chicago, I think I might give Chicago a second chance. Upgrade it from a movie I dislike to a movie I just don’t like.
There is a real difference.
…
Well, my movie is over. I think I’ll get some breakfast, freshen up a bit, re-dose on modafinil, get dressed, and go to that [unnamed event].
(straight to the bottom line; read the short version – or just donate without reading it at all)
There was a time when I thought writing a book was difficult, perhaps even impossible for any but a select few whose innate talent and carefully honed skill allowed them to grind out books over the course of years and years of great personal turmoil. (Well, plus a much more select few, such as Asimov, King, Clancy and Hubbard, who could apparently churn out huge, door-stopping tomes every month or two or three without apparent effort.) Still, I was determined to at least attempt to join that group of men and women which are called authors; I’ve always felt writing calling me.
To my luck, I stumbled across National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a community of people so called to writing that they work together supporting each other, all trying to write their own unique novel into existence at the same time. It was this supportive community that I found most attractive, fellow writers to share the experiences and struggles of writing with, to encourage and be encouraged by as we worked toward the same goal. The fact that the entire thing was based around what seemed at the time to be a ridiculous goal of writing an entire novel from start to finish (a first draft, anyway) in only 30 days seemed overwhelming and preposterous and I did not entirely expect to succeed, but I knew that I couldn’t ever finish writing a novel without starting one.
Since I first attempted it, during that first NaNoWriMo, I have completed four novels in under three years, and also put together a fifth book, a collection of short fiction and poetry.
Finishing a novel in a month? Done that.
A novel in two weeks? Did that, too.
A novel in eight days? Sure thing, no problem.
For my most recently completed novel, I wrote fully half of it in a single three-day weekend. All of these are, of course, simply the first drafts of books that have since been edited, copy-edited, typeset, and so forth until they were completed, readable books you can hold in your hands (or read on a screen). Also of note is that all of these things were accomplished in between working a full-time “day job” and without much sacrificing my other interests or social life (save for that three-day weekend spent entirely on writing). And it was all easy for me.
Now, I’m not yet writing the thick tomes of that select-of-the-select group, but quite intentionally, so far. I’m trying to write my books all approximately the same length so that I can get an idea of how fast I can write. The novel I wrote in a month is as long as the novel I wrote in two weeks, which is as long as the first draft of the one I wrote in eight days. But I think I can do better than that. In fact, I think I can write an entire book in a “single sitting.”
Continue reading The “Single-Sitting-Book” – A Call For Donations
I am not like some people, slowly killing myself with cigarettes or some other obvious thing, and I’ve given up on quickly killing myself, though once I learn how to use one and get a loaded gun into my hands, we may rapidly see whether I am bulletproof after all. Rather, I seem to be running myself thin, using myself up faster than was ‘intended’ so that I run out of rope before I reach the end.
Long, continuously-awake weekends is one thing, and certainly helps me use up more of my hours before they are due. This week I seem to be trying something else – using modafinil for something approaching its intended use. I’m taking a dose in the morning when I get up so that I’m not sleepy during the day. I’m not taking a follow-up dose in the middle of the day, because I’ve noticed a quirk about my physiology for now includes (accepting a brief nap in the afternoon) being quite unnaturally and unaidedly awake in the evening and into the night. Staying up late is easy. Getting up early after staying up late is difficult – not so bad with modern psycho-pharmacology on my side.
Actually, getting up isn’t so bad – the same mechanisms that allow me to survive a tiger attack in the middle of the night allow me to wake up and have full access to my faculties without a full night’s sleep – it’s staying up after an hour or two that become difficult. Modafinil seems to have resolved this. In the past, I just zombied through getting ready for and going to work and the first few hours of work – my brain seems to be able to sleep at half-rates while I’m awake enough to be as competent as the average joe – but so far, with the drug, I can wake myself up early, pop a couple pills (modafinil, Vit. C, daily multi-) and go about my day. Before the zombie act kicks in, the modafinil does, and before the modafinil wears off, my brain has done its thing.
This week I’m experimenting with 5 hours of sleep per night. Next week I shall try 4, and if successful I shall see about 3 the following week, and if possible, get myself down to 2 hours sleep a night. That would add nearly two full days to every week, which is over an additional week every month, for only about $36/month worth of Modafinil. A week a month, twelve weeks a year, imagine you could add three months to every year for less than $450. What would you do with the “extra” time?
Anyway, I figure at that rate I’ll use up an extra year of my allotted time on Earth every four years (live four years, live an extra year without even reaching it! five for the price of four!) and maybe reach the end up to 20% sooner. Or maybe, if I pull this trick off, I’ll force myself to live through 20% more life than I otherwise would have.
And is that a good or a bad thing?
I’m beginning to grow weary. I’ve been up nearly 19 hours, now. Time to masturbate and hit the hay. Or just hit the hay. Depression does wonders for reducing libido. So does getting told by every attractive young woman you meet that they’re already spoken for, and seeing all your friends get married and have kids and all your family turn their backs on you or die. Sigh.