Beer Goggle Dreams

Conversations with Raava - Chapter 1 - by Mike Hebel


The sky was clear and blue above Air Temple Island and a small breeze blew Korra’s hair into her face as she meditated atop an outcropping of rock overlooking Republic City.
( Read More )

People I've met over the years have mentioned having the same problem I do where I can't shut down my mind enough to fall asleep. It's like constantly having wheels turning at high speed and once you quiet one of them you realize how many others there are and spend time rushing from one thing to another trying to calm things down enough to get some sleep.

At least one writer I know has this problem to such a degree that she once said she banged her cranium on the headboard of her bed in an effort to knock herself unconscious. I'm not there yet thankfully but nights like this make me come close.

The problem as usual is that I'm awake. Sounds simple right? Why don't I try being _not_ awake? Frankly it doesn't work that way. Once I'm awake I have so many things and ideas that I can't focus. If I can't focus I can't quiet my mind. If I can't quiet my mind there's no way in hell I'm going to get to sleep. Add the restless legs and arms. Always feeling too warm unless a fan is blowing directly on me. Any little house noise puts me on guard and I have to get up and check it out.

It all adds up to sleepless nights.

Often I get chided for taking naps but honestly I need them. I've always needed them. If my body and mind decide to put me out for a couple hours so much the better. And often those naps help far more than sleeping in on Sunday. (Which BTW is the only day I really am able to sleep in these days.)

So what do I do on these nights? Well sometimes I converse with other sleepless friends across the world. Sometimes I write. (Chapter 6 of Becoming Twilight is up BTW. I finished it tonight.) Other nights I sketch but that doesn't happen too often. Most often what happens is I either try and go to sleep then fail and am up on the web all night until I'm too exhausted to stay awake. Or I sleep an hour or two, get up, go back to bed and sleep another hour or two, lather, rinse, repeat.

Tonight it was writing plus reading a manga online - Arakawa Under the Bridge. Between that I seem to have started to exhaust my brain with just enough time to get enough sleep to function.

Provided the phone doesn't ring with a 911 tech support call that is.

I swear if I could get away with taking a sedative every night to knock me out I would. So far only heavy sedatives seem to work properly. Everything else works in reverse and spins the wheels even faster. Meditation helps sometimes. Exercise other times. Nothing seems to be consistent. I even stop being affected by the sedatives in a relatively short period of time.

*yawn*

Looks like the lunar princess wants a visit with me finally. Good night!

23:13 PM 08/25/2012

So it's the weekend again and I've got a ton of things to do but frankly I'm getting only a certain percentage done simply because I'm tired again. This time though it's a physical thing because my chest muscle still hurts from the 'Dash. Aleve helps a lot but I can't take more than two or so of those in a 24 hour period so I'm holding off to take them early tomorrow so I can take them again early on Monday and not have an issue during work.

Suppsoedly a rib muscle/bruise should only take two weeks to heal and this one seems right on track as it's starting to hurt less unless I aggravate it. Still it was well earned so I begrudge it easily. ;-)

So regardless my wife and child when to her mother's brithday party and I took the opportunity to sleep for several hours without interruption and felt much better afterwards. Enough to get up and do a few things here in the workshop.

Had actual time to write in the paper journals with my quil pen. That was refreshing even though I'm horribly out of practice and dripped quite a bit on the paper. It was refreshing to get the words down on paper. As i've said before physical writing has a tendency to force me to compose my thoughs before setting them down. That makes for a slower flow but a more refined one. Especially when I'm using ink and a good quality journal.

And it's one step closer to getting back to my fiction writing. If I can make the time to put the words down on paper them I can make the time to put the words down in electronic form.

With the schedule I'm keeping for both work and sleep though that's hard to do. Especially with everything else on top of it. I'll keep trying though.

Still getting a handle on things around the house again. Bought a new trash can for the kitchen from the Goodwill today because the one we have is rusting at the top. The new one is also stainless steel so we'll see if it does any better.

And I have to mow the grass tomorrow on top of everything else.

One of the things I was writing down today was transcribing my quick notes about life, the universe, and magick into my permanent journals. I forced myself not to edit as I went along. And for that I think I'm better off. I can add amendments as separate entries later down the road.

And that's where things stand right now. Not going into anything else right now. Tomorrow I have to set up my father's new-to-him computer and transfer his applications and data to the new system. It's going from XP Pro to Windows 7 Pro so hopefully everything is going to work okay. If not then I can always load it up with XP Pro and he'll have the Windows 7 key for when he can upgrade/replace his applications.

During/after that I have to help my neighbor's kid with his laptop. He's got such a yearning to learn technical stuff. I hope like hell I'm up to teaching him.

'Night all!

14:26 PM 04/19/2011

So after certifying for my unemployment this morning I got a cold call from a headhunter who found my resume on Dice.com and wanted to submit me for a position doing help desk call center work for a particularly popular medical insurance company.

It sounds like a good job, pays more than I was looking for, and is in damn near the same place I was driving for the last decade at my previous job. So I told the headhunter to submit my resume and let me know when they want me to interview. It's not the Linux admin job but I can't afford to ignore anybody willing to potentially hire me.

I haven't gotten back to writing as of yet. That, like many other things, is on hold until I become employed again.

I have to apologize to ellenmillion. I have something in the Torn World submission queue that I haven't finished edits on. What happened was very simple and it wasn't just because I entered my Extended Benefits phase of my unemployment that suddenly takes up all my time.

After much thought on the matter it turns out that the edits (deservedly harsh ones) hit me while I was down. I just couldn't handle them because of what else is going on in my life. I was trying to climb back up out of the bucket labeled depression and they just hit me the wrong way.

And it's not their fault either because the edits for the story in question are very very correct in their reactions about what must be changed. I just couldn't, and for the moment still can't, process them mentally or emotionally. Thus I have to apologize because I'm just not up to snuff at the moment.
( Dark chocolate cupcakes and a library in a tree... )

So the CCNA chapter for today is IP Routing. I'm going to eat into that today as can and hopefully I'll get all the review questions right.

Studying would be so much easier if I didn't have to worry about my income, the house, and a ton of other things. *grump*

Still it could be worse - I could be in northern Japan right now. (My friend in Tokyo is okay thankfully.)
( Rampant Rumblings... )

07:12 AM 03/09/2011
Managed to clean off my tech bench yesterday and do mosfet replacements on two of the 6 Roombas I have accumulated. The one seems to be charging okay but I have to check it over the next 72 hours. The other...well...Banpei might actually have to be retired. I replaced the entire system board in him and he is still giving the the red finger...er...ring and not charging. I'm going to see if one of the other batteries does better with this new board once the other two are finished with their charge cycles.
( Soldered Suckers... )

So I just spent quite a while out in the garage photographing things to list on E-Bay. Turns out I have a lot more than I thought that can go up there and with the special E-Bay is running on listing fees a ton of it is going up there tomorrow.

I can dearly use the spare income to pick up a number of things for the house as well as projects that I need to finish such as router stuff for CCNA lab work.
( Witless Wanderings... )

Just came back from running errands and figured I needed to post an update here.

I started writing the second part of the Torn World story last night. Not much but it's a start and I've got several images stuck in my head in regards to the story so it's definitely going to start moving again.

A friend commented that things like this are my hobbies and must remain so. I disagree. I feel far more alive when doing creative stuff than when doing I/T stuff. That's just the way it is. And that likely means I should have been doing this sort of stuff all along. Something to think about huh? ;-)

I often wonder what the world would be like if everybody was doing what they were happiest doing. A pipe dream in this society at the moment because of the all mighty dollar but fun to think about anyway.
( More nerdery behind the cut... )

January 5, 2009 11:24 AM 1/5/09

1) Stay employed until you can find a lower stress form of income that pays enough to live on.

2) Re-do garden according to plan - raised beds, new fence, and automatic watering.

3) Replace transfer case on truck.

4) Schedule time so all factors get enough time.

5) Lose at least 30 pounds.

6) Finish garage and third bedroom organization.

7) Properly ground all outlets. Re-wire circuits as necessary.

8) Re-wire landscape path lights for single solar charged power source with brighter LEDs.

9) Use the XXXX to make XXXX and stain it with XXXX.

10) Make a new front door complete with light sources.

11) Make Tin Man/Dorothy music video before Duckon.

12) Finish staff for Bill.

13) Re-paint bike and purchase/install proper jets for carbs.

14) Insulate garage roof.

15) Purchase/install more web cameras.

16) Re-wire network/wireless cables in the house.

17) Replace toilets.

18) Set up plant starter shelves in garage on rolling wire racks.

19) Get estimate for insulating the walls of the house.

20) Purchase/install solar attic/vent fan.

21) Clean up and insulate water pipes in crawl space.

22) Clean up and insulate ductwork in crawl space.

23) Record at least two filk songs you've written.

24) Learn to draw at least basic human figures.

25) Write a full George story.