3000 words...

Oh yea, 3000 words behind...

Will to live faltering...

*groans*

I pondered posting on the Nanowrimo Ate My Soul forums, but I decided against it. I need a bigger rant pad than that. Blogger seems to have more space for an essay than a teensy weensy message board.

I'm sure certain people with much lower word counts than me will want to shoot me for whining and groaning and pissing and moaning. (The "I'm So Far Behind But Not Giving Up" thread was actually quite inspirational to me, but I wussed out of posting there for fear of getting rotten fish and tomatos hurled in my direction for having broken 10k words...)

It's odd. I was so happy with myself for actually breaking 10,000 words. But now, when I put pedal to the metal and actually figure out how much I need to write (1667 x 9), I see EEEEEARGH 15,000 words and it seems like an impossible goal.

It doesn't help that I missed writing a single word today (or rather, YESTERDAY, since it's now 12.53am TODAY *freaks*).


9am-11am Wanted to attend an educational talk. Was fun. One piece of homework yet to be done from that talk.

11am-1pm Set up experiment since my ordered ingredients finally arrived. Find out the experiment is gonna take much longer than expected. Get dreaded phone call to meet new temp 'boss' in new temp two monther job transfer, ie. start real work.

1pm-2pm Lunch

2pm-2.30pm Mourn over not having time to do experiment, feel guilty about creating additional workload for people, delegate and "tai-chi"-style PUSH the experiment to poor lab tech.

2.30pm-3.30pm Meet new temp 'boss', help do some sorting 'grunt' work that needed to get done, while discussing lofty issues, seriously lofty issues.

3.30pm-5.30pm 'Grunt' work over, run up and down to lab to look in on experiment, suggest a stopping point since I didn't want the tech overwhelmed and hating me overmuch, race to cafe area and do more talking about lofty and philosophical issues and generally brood over a huge project that's on the scale of Nanowrimo and also due around the same time. Forsee HUGE crunch time late 3rd/4th week of November, vague sense of unease and panic begins to build up.

5.30pm-6pm Clear up some admin matters, meet lab tech to get a sense of where the experiment is (ie, lots more work needed to get done tomorrow, which I hope I can do, as long as I don't have to keep reacting to the 'interruptions' of new temp boss, since I gotta drop everything and be perky, y'know?) Exhaustion sets in, plus sense of having accomplished something that day.

6pm onwards Go home, eat dinner, collapse on bed and sleep like the dead until 12.30am.


At which point, I stir, and begin to twitch. Racing through my head are still the seriously lofty thoughts (about nothing Nanowrimo), and an uncomfortable sense that I'm still sleep deprived. I couldn't have spent more than 4-5 hours asleep. I should be getting more sleep. My computer's still on, humming, thinking that I actually wanted to do some writing tonight (well, yesterday.) I turn it off. I try to go back to sleep. I toss and I turn.

I have way too much self-induced guilt on my mind. I get up. I turn the computer back on. I go get a drink of water. I pace up and down. I surf the Nanowrimo forum. I'm now on Blogger.

Oh gods. Three thousand words. Let's put it this way. I start a timer for 15 minutes to fool myself into getting started. When I can actually find the impetus (through an urge to procrastinate) and uninterrupted time and PEACE AND QUIET (very impt for me) to write. I end up writing for 1-2 hours (as tracked by my timer/stopwatch). I cough out a grand total of 200-300 words on average.

I have to run away, pace around for more, make a drink, then come back and repeat and repeat ad nauseam until I hit my 1667 words, and lately, hitting 1200 and 1300 words seems to be the best I can do.

If I had the whole fucking day to write, I could do this. I was quite happy doing this on Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

I don't understand how people can write around the spaces of a busy day. I seriously CANNOT. I am a one-track mind person. I gotta complete a project and I move on to another. This nibbling at the corners of a day is driving me seriously BATFUCK and APESHIT.

I have this sense of immending doom and getting run over in a collision between a 10-car train and a trailer truck somewhere in the near future. Two big projects, both weighing several tons each.

But I HAVE TO GET THIS NOVEL DONE. I MUST. TOO MUCH IS INVESTED. TOO MUCH IS AT STAKE. COME HELL OR HIGH WATER THIS NOVEL MUST GET DONE.

But I can't even fool myself into saying that I will catch up on the weekend. Why? I don't HAVE an uninterrupted weekend. There's this annual dinner and dance thing on Saturday. That means a night of serious productivity is gone gone gone.

(Oh, did I mention that my best productivity appears to be in the wee early morning hours. Like now, for example?)

And then I can't stay up Sunday because I gotta work Monday, unless I managed to finnagle some leave...(Which is a thought, hrm. Taking leave is troublesome because I now have to check with two departments, methinks. But if I can take Mon and Tue off, that'll make me happier. I can watch NFL football, AND do some Nanowrimo.)

I'm worried about serious sleep deprivation setting in. Like actually, it's now 1.20am. I'm actually feeling 'better' about myself and Nanowrimo. My energy level is now about 9 (from 7 at midnight cos I was still waking up all bleary eyed and freaked out), my creativity level feels about 9 too, and I have this sense that if I go and take the time to make a nice warm cuppa sugared tea and sit and brood and write, I can get some wordage in.

It probably won't be 3000 words, but if I carve 1000 words off, 2000 words may not look so bad in the future.

The only thing is, I KNOW this is gonna take me until oh, maybe 6am if I'm lucky, and 8am if I'm not?

Then I gotta go to work. Like a zombie in the morning. And face near-irresistable narcolepsy in the afternoon.

I KNOW my biorhythms. This makes me the happiest, but I can only kinda keep these hours if I'm self-employed. Nothing makes me happier than sleeping off the 2pm-4/5pm stretch. I HATE the 3-4pm hour. I need a siesta. I'm not sure if I wanna suffer like that.

And there's still Friday to go after Thursday. *faints*

They say week 2's a bummer. Well, week 3's not looking any brighter from where I'm standing right now.

Goddamn.

I think I really am going to sacrifice sleep on the altar of ambition.

It's not as if I can go back to sleep anymore. I've hit like a peak for now (even though there's a mild stress migraine starting to build up), and guilt-induced adrenaline is flooding my system so badly that I'm bound to stay up.

It's all gonna wash out at 3pm, and I am gonna HATE myself then and the job that keeps me up at that kind of ungodly hour though.

(says the person who is thinking of 3am as a productive hour. GO me.)