Tag: sleep

Feeling My Age

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

More often than not, I love the age I am.  I’m not one of those people who gets freaked out because I’m turning whatever age.  I’ve earned my age.  I enjoy who I am now. 

However, Friday night I spent the night doing nine tarot readings and with a lovely group of women.  We read tarot, talked, ate and in general had a good time.  At the same time, I didn’t get home until 6:30 in the morning.  I felt every day of my age on Saturday. 

Exhaustion doesn’t describe how I felt after spending 24 hours awake.  Rarely do I lay down and fall instantly asleep but I did on Saturday.  I had plans for the day but they went out the door because I spent the morning sleeping. 

It seems like it was a weekend for lack of sleep and the week has started out this way as well.  It doesn’t help that last week I had to walk down a flight of stairs so every time I went to sleep, I’d wake up with pain in my legs. 

I’m feeling a bit sleep deprived.  This means I’m less productive.  Last night I wanted to continue editing Wayfarer Resolve or work on the crochet project I need to get in the mail.  I couldn’t do either.  My brain said enough.  Instead I spent the evening messaging with a couple of writer friends until I crashed and slept. 

I’m starting to feel less sleep deprived so hopefully tonight I can be more productive.  I need to get the pattern done and in the mail so that will be my focus.  After that I’m back to Wayfarer Resolve.  This novel is being grumbly and difficult.  I’ll keep working on it and hope I can get it out this month (not holding my breath). 

Between paying bills for us and my mom, running errands, and doing work in our house, my time for writing / publishing has dwindled.  I’m going to carve out time because I’m feeling very grumpy about the lack of time I have.  This is more of the balancing out of all aspects of my life. 

Grumpiness Abounds

by eileentroemel, posted in Life

It’s been a week.  The weather changed and my pain level is up.  I try to remember this most days but sort of lost it at work.  My student worker got to listen to me complain and curse.  I apologized it shouldn’t have happened.  I did close my door, call my sister and complain to her.  I got over it mostly but there are just things which annoy  me.  I had one of those days.

All around, rough week.  Pain at levels which are nearly unbearable.  I hear my inner voice saying things I don’t really feel or believe but when I’m weighed down with pain it takes me to places I don’t want to go.  This is not a plea for pity or sympathy – a statement.  My hope – if I talk about this which I hate doing – someone out there will know they aren’t alone and will know someone else understands.

Movement equals agony.  Breathing is work.  For me the worst part is I can’t crochet.  I am struggling to write when I’ve got stories pounding in my head.  The things which lift and change my mood – which is supposed to help – are too painful to do.

This is what chronic pain is.  This is what I deal with.  It makes it hard to be positive and upbeat and pleasant.  My job requires pleasant.

I get through.  I’m not giving in to this bullshit.  The pain will ease.  The pain will fade.  I’ll sleep.  I’ll work on a story until the pain has shifted.  I’ll do what I can to get through it.  It’s all I can do.

Part of me wants to rail on the medical community but really what’s the point.  I’m to a point where I accept they’re not going to help me.  All I can do is find ways to cope.

So on to normal – whatever that is.  It’s pay week.  I’ve paid bills.  Ken and Vicki will run errands tomorrow.  I’m hoping for a quiet weekend.  I’m hoping I can spend time writing and publishing things I have done.  I’ll have to see how the weekend goes.

It seems like we always have a lot going on every weekend.  I have a stack of crocheting on my couch I’d like to finish.  I have several projects I’d want to experiment with.  I just need to get my arms, back, and neck to stop hurting.

Tomorrow I can sleep later.  I’m hoping to sleep until I naturally wake up.  This helps with the pain but again, it’s a pay week so busy weekend.  I’ll see how things go.  Ken and Vicki like to grocery shop at like six in the morning.  I see no reason to acknowledge six am exists.  They’re happy morning people.  I’m going to post this blog and go write.  If the writing is going, I hope it will keep me busy for a few hours.

I’m working on an independent story.  If that peters out, I’ve got Wayfarer 17 and a few other options for working on writing.  I also have editing to do.  Always there seems to be editing to do.

A Perfectly Normal Weekend

by eileentroemel, posted in Life

A perfectly normal weekend with errands run and chores done.  It is Sunday morning and all of the normal weekend tasks are done.  Now I have to decide what I’m going to work on.

As always, I have a long list of things I could do but I’ve been really tired and feeling a bit blah.  I’ve also been sleeping a lot more than normal for me.  The last few nights I’ve slept at least five to eight hours.

To me this means I need to take things easy and let my body recuperate from whatever is grumbling around in there.  I’ve been watching Criminal Minds.  I’ve just started the fourth season.  I find myself creeped out, grossed out, and sometimes hoping the bad guy gets away with it.

There was an episode where a woman was killing men.  She was raped and the cops did nothing about it.  She “solved” the issue by enticing men away from their friends and killing them.  Unfortunately, they weren’t the men who raped her but… I had a hard time blaming her.

Along the same lines, one episode was a high school boy who killed his father, his girlfriend’s father and several people in the high school.  The fathers were abusive and the people at the high school were bullying him both in person and cyber bullying.  I had a hard time empathizing with the victims in this episode.

I know this is fiction but when you read the news and hear about all these things, it makes you wonder how sick the human race is.  At the same time I wonder if we treated ourselves and our children better if there would be fewer problems.

It is a complex issue and I know I’m simplifying it but this show makes me think about all sorts of things.

It’s All Her Fault!

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

In my head last night, I had a little argument with myself.  I was working Wayfarer 11 and writing a scene.  I had to pee but I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of writing.  In my head, I’m saying, I have to pee.  I have to write.  I have to pee. I have to write.

Needless to say, I did eventually make it to the bathroom.  When I realized I was having this inner debate (it was distracting from my writing) I made myself stop writing for the necessary break.  This is how involved I get with my writing.

I spent the commute home talking to my eldest daughter, we discussed at length where I was with 11.  I reiterated it was her fault I started the next Wayfarer novel as we were talking about different plot issues and scenes.  It made my brain think about it and I woke up with these ideas, which led to me writing 3000 words.

By the time I was done last night, I had nearly 12000 words and am LOVING the start of this book.  I don’t always say that and usually by the time I’m done, I don’t like the book.  I was able to tie up several loose ends from previous plots.  While those plots were finished, they weren’t tied up nicely.  This way all the answers are out there and it made for an exciting start to this book.

The thing is I woke up this morning with more in my head so I’ll be working again tonight with writing (hopefully).  Even though I didn’t get to bed until midnight, I actually slept really well until  my 5:00 am alarm.  This is an improvement from the night before.  Five solid hours of sleep is better than eight hours of broken up sleep.

Back at Work

by eileentroemel, posted in Crochet and crafting, Life, Writing

I didn’t dread coming back to work.  For the most part, I enjoy my job.  Yesterday was WORK though.  I had a ton of emails and it seemed like the ones interspersed with the junk mail I got took a lot of time to work through and address.  I eventually got caught up but still a tiring day.

When I left work I was still in a fairly good mood but by the time I was driving my energy had fallen away.  By the time I got home, I was wiped out.  Sitting at my desk all day, my pain level was up.

I am back at work.  It means I’m back to picking and choosing what gets done in the evening.  I’ve been watching Midsomer Murders (no that isn’t misspelled).  Tonight I’m going to attempt to crochet while I watch.  My arm was bugging me again.  I worked on a scarf for my daughter out of the Paton Metallic yarn.  This yarn is very slippery so the tension when you crochet has to be fairly taut, I think this is what causes my arm to hurt when I use this yarn.  I have a small project I want to finish with this yarn and then it is going to be put away.

This week I’m going to settle back into routine and work.  My sleep has been sporadic at best so I’m taking some down time.  However, this weekend I’m hoping to publish several short stories and update two of my novels.  Once these writing tasks are done, I’ll be looking at the third Defenders novel again.  I’ve been reading what I have and hope to start writing on it again next week.  I may have to give up and decide it will be a four books but I am still hopeful I can finish it in three.

Wayfarer 10 is starting to nudge at me.  At the same time Wayfarer 8 is in need of editing.  All of these tasks mean I’ll be busy for a while on writing.  At some point, I need to work on crocheting.  The next big project is the skirt for my friend.  I’m going to pull it out and redo the waistband.  I have two separate ideas and I have to see what my friend would prefer.

After the skirt, I have an afghan for my niece, which she just told me the pattern she likes so I’m going to make it my next project.  Plus I have all my holiday gifts to get started.  It’s already July.  I better get busy.

Productivity bottoms out…

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

I got my hubby from the airport just fine last night and even though it was 5:00 on a Friday night, traffic wasn’t horrible.  We had one stretch of parking lot like traffic but still managed to get home by 6:30.

We spent a nice night together before he went to bed.  I was tired so planned to go to bed early.  Then my sister texted me a couple of times.  Then my oldest daughter texted me and I called her.  We talked until 12:30.  It was one of those good conversations.

At 12;30 I had every intention of going to sleep.  I meant to.  I meant to just turn out the light and crash.  Instead I pulled out my net book and started writing.  A scene was bouncing around in my head.  I couldn’t get the scene out of my head.  I had to get it on paper.  I started writing.  At 3:30 in the morning I stopped writing but only because my eyes hurt and were watering.  I turned out the light and struggled to get to sleep until 4:30… then I woke up at 7;30 wishing I could sleep for another two or ten hours.

I finally gave in to wakefulness and got up at 9:00.  By 11:00 I was ready for a nap.  I didn’t get one.  I was either texting or talking to a variety of people all day long.  It seems the moratorium on my peace and quiet so I can write is up and now everyone wants my attention.

I did get a lot done and last night I wrote 5300 words.  Today I’ve written about 3300 words.  I’m making progress but not as quickly as when people were leaving me alone.

Since the people bugging me are my daughters, I’m okay with that.  I’ve had good conversations with all three of them, one of my nieces and one of my sisters.  It was a busy day.  Tomorrow will probably be just as busy but I’ll see how things go.

I swear I’m going to bed early and getting up early so I can get stuff done tomorrow.  At least that is what I mean to do… yeah – I know that didn’t work so well last night.

Wayfarer is still on sale!  99 Cents!!!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NDF36LO
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/473960
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wayfarer-eileen-troemel/1120325459?ean=9781501093852

12,000 Words

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

Yesterday, I woke up and intended to write.  I started writing and didn’t make a lot of progress.  My day was somewhat putzy with conversations with my middle daughter and work.  I spent a chunk of time taking care of work stuff and waiting on business stuff for my writing.

This of course means I was playing games on the computer while I waited.  I enjoy the games but by the time I had lunch I was annoyed with myself.  Here I am alone in my house and instead of being productive, I was playing Royal Envoy, Backgammon and Rummy 500.

To be fair, I was waiting on Amazon to process my change in price on Wayfarer.  After I quit playing and got lunch, I started writing.  I wrote all afternoon.  I wrote well into the night.  I nearly forgot to eat but my stomach was grumbling at me.  I heated up supper and ate before going back to writing.

I quit writing when I couldn’t keep my eyes open.  I came to a scene where I wasn’t sure which direction I wanted to go so I wrote as far as I could and quit.  This was a little after midnight.

Turning out my light, I slept almost immediately.  Until 2:30 this morning when I woke up, looked at the clock and told myself I needed more sleep.  I dozed until 5:30, frustrated I told myself I was going to sleep.  I woke up again at 6:00 and gave myself 15 minutes and I was going to just get up.

I hate mornings like this because I wake up feeling groggy and grumpy.  The good thing is at 2:30 I woke up knowing what I wanted to do with that scene.  Now when I’m done with my morning routine of checking email and such, I can hit the scene and move forward.

Yesterday with all my putzing, I still managed to write 12,000 words.  I got so much further in my story and am pleased with all the scenes I wrote.  I have two more scenes in my head to play out.  Now I’m finding with this book that the characters and story are taking me to scenes I hadn’t expected so those two scenes will likely turn into several other scenes but for now, I am going with two scenes.

I have today and most of the day tomorrow alone still and I’m planning to make the most of it.  I will write the scene in my head, take a shower, and get breakfast.  At some point I have to pay bills,  However, if that doesn’t happen until after Ken’s home it isn’t a big deal.

If I put another 12,000 words into this story today, I’ll have met my goal for word count (and then some).  If the story is done in 12,000 words that would be very nice.  I’ll just have to see how it goes.

Sleep, blessed sleep

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

Sleep was the order of the day yesterday.  I dozed until after 11 in the morning.  I worked on the computer for a short period of time updating the checkbook and such.  We had lunch (or breakfast for me) and watched West Wing.

He put up the Christmas tree while we watched.  I meant to crochet but I didn’t.  After the tree was up he did other things and I napped.  With supper, we watched Diners, Driveins, and Dives and then West Wing again.

He went to bed and I thought about going to bed.  Instead I worked on editing a manuscript.  Once I started editing, the night slipped away from me.  Still I made it to bed before midnight.  Apparently I needed sleep yesterday but not today.  I woke up early this morning and am up, showered, dressed, and ready to face the day all by 8:00 am (or 8:20 as it is right now).

Ken’s wrapping gifts and I’m going to crochet today I think.  I have a few things I want to get done but we will see.  I’ve not written in a week it may be time for my brain to kick back into gear and work on writing.  I edited the fourth and fifth books of the Wayfarer series over the last few days.  They aren’t done.  I need to swipe through them again once I get the edits in the computer.

Before his game starts, I may see if he wants to watch Babylon 5 or West Wing but if he doesn’t I might just decide to make it a writing day.  I’m feeling ambivalent about it which could be good or bad for the writing.  I could open the file and the words could just flow or I could putz around and not accomplish anything.  I’ll have to see how the morning goes.

If I’m not knee deep in writing, this afternoon while he watches football I’ll work on getting the edits on the computer.  After that it is a matter of getting all the pieces together.  Wayfarer Negotiator and Wayfarer Wedding are the next two in the series.  I have the cover for the one but need other pieces in order to publish.

As much as I slept yesterday, I wouldn’t mind a nap at some point today but I’ll have to see how the day goes and how involved I get with what I’m doing.

Writing, Crocheting, Napping

by eileentroemel, posted in Crochet and crafting, Life, Writing

Here it is Saturday morning and I should be productive.  Yesterday I came home tired and grumpy.  After paying bills, I curled up in the recliner and took a nap.  Ken and I watched Babylon 5 and had pizza for supper.

I should have worked on all the writing stuff I have on my list or some of the crocheting stuff I have on my list.  I didn’t.  By 8:00 last night I was in my jammies and crashing.  I talked to all three of my girls yesterday – always a good thing.  After that I crashed for the night.

Normally I wouldn’t go to bed this early because after about four hours I’m up and can’t sleep.  It throws my sleep pattern off.  However, last night I crashed.  I woke up three or four times throughout the night but I “slept” for about eleven or twelve hours sort of.  I haven’t done this in ages.

This morning I’m working on book work for the writing, matching payments with sales.  Several people have asked if I’m coming out ahead, the answer is no, not yet.  My expenses still outweigh my income but I know this is a long term thing not a short term thing.

I have nine books out and am hoping to get another out this weekend.  That will be my next project.  I have a little bit of editing to do, checking things out, adding in front and back material.  Then I will do production.  Shockingly I have the cover already done and am hoping to get through all the production steps so I can go ahead and publish today or tomorrow.

Once I’m done with this book, I’ll be working on edits for the next manuscript and writing for the several stories I have running right now.  I feel this week has been unproductive for me.  I’ve written only a little and edited only a little.  I’ve done a little crocheting.

One thing I have noticed this week and I’m reminded of it as I look at the trees outside my window.  It is fall and the leaves are gorgeous.  It is my favorite time of year, the trees are gold, orange, red, green and it feels so good.  Even though it is a gray day outside, I see all the flame colors out my window and know it will be a good day whatever I end up doing.

Four Down, One to Go

by eileentroemel, posted in Writing

Friday I promised myself I’d get the five manuscripts in my bag edited over the weekend.  It totaled nearly a thousand words.  I got through three and a half.  I finished the fourth one tonight.

The one I worked on tonight was a first edit of a rough draft.  I thought I might have to do some pretty serious editing but discovered I liked the story just as much as when I wrote it.  There were scenes where I got goose bumps, teared up, and laughed.

The main character is strong but not overbearing and the main couple are loving, funny, fierce, and flawed.  I like it.

I read this one out loud.  No idea why, I just did.  It helped the editing go faster and the dialog be edited more smoothly I think.

One more to go and I’ll have my pile done.  At least with this round.  The last one I have to edit, I just finished on Thursday so it may need to sit for a little longer.  I have three that will move into my done pile for editing (I think).  Then it is all about production for them.

Hopefully with getting this manuscript edited, I’ll be able to get some sleep tonight.  Last night I slept a total of two hours.  The bad part of that is it wasn’t even a consecutive two hours.  I got a little here and there.  It was a rough night.  I’m hoping tonight will be better.