Reading

Imbolc                                      Garden Planning Moon

Not sure what wiped me out yesterday, but I sure felt crummy.  May be lack of sleep from reading too late into the night.  I don’t read much, fiction that is, during the day, just things for projects.  Art history, research for the novel, news, items for which I have either immediate use or that I consider part of my responsibility as a citizen to stay informed.

After my workout, usually around 6:30 or 7:00 pm, I go upstairs, eat a light supper and then read.  This is time I used to watch TV.  Now you’d think that having a couple of hours to read that I hadn’t used before would make me happy with that and that I’d get to bed earlier than I had in the past.  Nope.

When I read, I get hooked, stay in, read one more chapter, let myself get carried away by what John Gardner called the fictive dream.  I’ve done this all my life and had to stop reading in bed because it screwed up my getting to sleep.  Now I read in the living room, in a big leather chair.  And it screws up my getting to sleep.  Do you see a pattern here?

My best guess is sleep deprivation, accumulated gradually, made me sick.  It used to.  All the time. When I was anxious, couldn’t sleep, had to go to work, drink lots of coffee to stay awake and alert, come home, be so wired that I couldn’t go to sleep and then the next day, repeat.  When I finally put this bad pattern to rest, I was, quite literally, a lot happier.

Slept better last night and took a good nap this afternoon.  So, I felt better today.  Wrote my 1,500 words, studied Latin for two hours after the nap, worked out, now I’m ready for a steam bath and after that supper.  Then, more reading.