I have never really been an insomniac, but every now and then I just can't make myself drift off to sleep the way I'd like to. When I was employed full time I could be asleep nearly as soon as my head hit the pillow. It was a skill developed over the years by cramming all the activities that I actually wanted to do into the late evening hours before resting up to spend the better part of my day doing all the work related activities that I had to do.
Having not been employed on any regular basis since February, my sleep schedule has become pretty varied. I've been able to spend long nights reading, playing video games or scratching away at a notebook by a dim light as Bethany slept soundly beside me. Tonight is one of those nights that I just can't make myself get to sleep.
I finally rolled out of bed just before 1 a.m. and decided I would do a little writing. Nothing too serious, just a little meandering on a murder mystery idea I've had bouncing around in various forms since high school. I've tapping away at it for the last 35 minutes (and by the way, we finally broke down and purchased a new Microsoft ergonomic keyboard. Not one of the fancy ones that has the keyboard broken into two segments, but one of the comfortable, gently curbed black ones that are an absolute joy to type on.) and I just realized that everything I've written is bad. Painfully bad. So bad that I hit the close button immediately and declined to save any of the few hundred words I'd cranked out.
So...it's not a night for writing. Except I'm going to blog. About nothing in general, really. It's almost quiet enough in the house at 1:30 in the morning to hear the gentle pitter-patter of the drizzling rain outside. Tomorrow is supposed to be cold and rainy and even though the rest of the week is supposed to be dry I'm hoping that these cool temperatures will shock the leaves into turning colors.
After a busy week and weekend of shooting, Bethany and I easily have a couple thousand photos to sort through and process with another wedding looming on the horizon for Saturday. I've set myself the goal of finishing the three portrait sessions and at least my half of the wedding by Friday. If we don't stay ahead of this we'll be buried under a digital mountain by the end of the month.
Speaking of endings, I finished Patrick O'Brian's The Wine Dark Sea almost two hours ago, book #17 in his Aubrey-Marturin series. I really am going to miss this series when I've read it all. There are 20 full novels and one that was left incomplete upon O'Brian's death a few years ago. There are some books that I wish I could read for the first time again and without exception every book in that series has been like that. The next two books, The Commodore and The Yellow Admiral are in the mail at the cost of a penny a piece, thanks to the wonders of Amazon.
Until they get here I'm going to delve in to Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's The Wheel of Darkness. It's had resoundingly bad review from my trust literary circle so far, but it's the next in the Pendergast series and I'm bound to read it if I want to get any further along. The good news is that Preston and Child have just the right touch of the macabre to make for the perfect October read.
And since it's October I may pull Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree off the shelf. It's a classic kid's book that my seventh grade teacher read to us in the fall of that year. It stuck with me for so long that I finally chased down a copy of it last year after Halloween and it deserves another appreciative read, much like The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, a perennial favorite. I don't know how many times I've read that little yellow paged novel, but that Newbury Award winning puzzle mystery has never gotten old.
And it's now almost 2 a.m. Think I'm going to give this sleep thing another try.
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