creative.mother.thinking

I went to bed 45 minutes late but slept well and my sleep app thought my “readiness for the day“ (whatever that is) was superb. I managed the complete morning routine and even started jotting down the timeline of romance no. 1 so I can finally figure out how it affects romance no.2.

I promised a picture of the finished socks and here they are:

I started the next pair right away and after five rounds or so I decided to pull everything back and use a different cast-on that looks better and is stretchier.

I talked with my husband and called my mother and did not read my daily chapter in „War and Peace“. I am also behind on listening to my daily piece of classical music but I guess I’ll get back to it soon and will make up for the missed days.

It was cold enough for a fire in the wood stove so our house was cozy and warm. Lunch was a little late but then it often is on Sundays:

My afternoon was all Genshin Impact all the way, I had to put some serious time in to finish the event stuff that ended last night. The boy had already told me off for leaving it all to the last minute but then he still helped me with a few things.

In between I talked briefly to the rest of the family, did the dishes, changed the towels and watched my husband clean washbasins and toilets and wash three loads of laundry and hang them all up.

And yes, I am spending too much time playing that video game. I need to change that. Half the time should be enough, it’s not a race to finish the fastest.

I ate dinner, played some more in between reading and then I started writing this post, made a list for today and went to bed.

Today will be somewhat busy, the plan is to go walking/running and do bodyweight training in addition to teaching. I also really need to get back to the cover designer ASAP…

And I had all the reasons.

1. I had gone to bed 45 minutes late.
2. I had dawdled in the morning and there was no time to open the manuscript.
3. Even if there had been time I wouldn’t have wanted to write. (This is pretty standard after not writing for a while.)
4. The weather went from sunny and mild to gray and cold.
5. I felt totally paralyzed and had a super hard time with transitions all day.
6. There were dog walkers everywhere when I went out.
7. The yarn I was knitting was dark, sticky and blue.

You get the gist.

I did have a nice walk/run:

I came home a little late and lunch was barely started (another reason for crankiness) so I took a shower and then folded some laundry. And then there finally was food:

I read and played that video game and had to stop right in the middle because it was time for the weekly writers Zoom. Since the US are on daylight savings time already but we still have another week to go the meeting was an hour earlier.

In the kitchen my husband was busy doing the dishes so I helped drying them a little. Made myself dinner and we watched the „Rest in Peace Mrs. Columbo“-episode. That one is a good one.

I then didn’t want to do anything at all (that was basically the theme for the day) but did make myself start writing this post and make a list for today before slacking off again.

Despite the list I’m still not quite sure what today will bring but it will certainly be very, very cold.

Oh and I finished my husband’s socks while watching TV. I’ll take a picture later today.

Duh.

I went to bed on time. I did not sleep all that well, all my own fault for eating junk late in the evening. But hey, eight hours of sleep.

I even opened the manuscript and did yoga and everything.

Husband and I had a long conversation that was actually nice and then another one (still nice). I started doing the dishes but ran out of time because the big thing for the day was riding my bike to the next town over and get another prescription for orthotics from my orthopedist.

Which I did. The weather was nice, sunny, a bit windy and not too warm and getting there only took about twenty minutes. I had to bike next to a big road most of the way but there is a separate bike path and all was good. I came back home much earlier than my husband had expected.

There was still half an hour before lunchtime and he was pretty stressed out. He had tried doing garden stuff, the dishes, going out to buy alcohol-free beer and lemonade, and starting to cook.

Which was a bit much all at once so he couldn’t finish any of it. I was all set to tackle the dishes but he thought it would be better to cook first. Which was right.

So I dusted and vacuumed the annex after helping with chopping vegetables and setting the table.

Lunch was just a tad late but very tasty:

After that I played my video game for quite some time. One after the other most of my students canceled or rescheduled their lessons so I was free until 4.30. I then dusted and vacuumed the old part of the house before sauntering off to teach.

Nice lessons including a very new student. First time ever that I got contacted by someone’s PA. I thought I was emailing back and forth with a family member, of course, and got the parent’s name wrong, oops. But it all got straightened out eventually.

I then skipped playing the piano, cleaned all the mirrors, ate dinner, started writing this post and making a list for today and did all the dishes. No bodyweight training yet, the boy and I decided to start that again on Sunday. For now 40 minutes of biking has to be enough for one day. Well, that and 10 minutes of yoga.

I went to bed half an hour late. Because I didn’t brush my teeth early enough. Apparently that leads to going on social media right at bedtime. Bad move.

I was super slow first thing in the morning, so I ran out of time for the manuscript, husband and I had a misunderstanding first thing and there went the rest of my energy for the day.

The original plan was to do all the things but in the end I shunted some stuff to today and tomorrow. I turned the heel on the sock-in-progress and promptly made a mistake – at least not a big one – then the dishes and in between made sure the boy was awake. He had a Zoom meeting for uni at 2 and wanted to get up a little before that, of course.

I decided to go to the nearby supermarket because my husband was meeting a friend for lunch and so I had to provide the traditional frozen pizza:

I found out that I don’t care for pesto on my pizza.

I then talked with the boy, briefly, and with my husband, ate all the gummy bears read and played Genshin and then it was time to teach.

A break, more talking, more teaching and after I started eating dinner at 8 pm which is a bit late.

The boy came downstairs and opted to kill some bosses in game in co-op mode. He thought that would take about half an hour but in the end it was 1 1/2 hours because my poor characters are so frail, so he swapped their equipment around and such.

Then I started writing this post, made a list for today (another super busy day), and went to bed. I’m very determined to make sleep a real priority.

Not quite sure determination is actually the thing that counts but we’ll see.

As often as it takes, apparently.

I actually went to bed on time and slept well, phew. I still was super tired all day but at least I wasn’t making the problem worse.

I did my morning routine without manuscript time, seemed I was totally blocked about the novella-in-progress, so much so that I thought about starting something else or revising the new urban fantasy.

Husband and I had a great conversation over breakfast that we had to cut short because he had to leave for his dentist appointment.

While he was away I tried to make myself write unsuccessfully. I spent some time online and I knitted while reading.

Just as I was about to get up from the kitchen table my husband returned. Everything had gone well, things are looking good.

I did the dishes while listening to Piazolla and then to a podcast about writing.

And then I went out and redid the first day of Couch to 5k for the umpteenth time. I wasn’t quite sure if I’d be up for it but thought I’d just try and if the running parts (45 second intervals) were too much I could always just walk back.

It was glorious:

The sun was shining and it was fun to move and to listen to some BTS and I got to think round and round the novella-in-progress until I felt all motivated and had sorted through all kinds of problems with my writing.

It looks like this might not actually be a novella in the end, though, those two guys have some serious stuff to work through.

Very exciting!

I came back home to lunch already on the table so we ate next:

We ate together, then I played some Genshin and took a shower before teaching all the students. One of my students had canceled so I used that time to get a start on writing down the timelines for the first romance novel because that is relevant for the second one. I can’t write more until I have sorted that out.

Thought looking at the timeline of those heroes’ lives I might have to go back through that story again to make sure people are all their appropriate ages. The whole thing is ‚contemporary‘ without any world events or covid. Sure.

I taught my last student of the day did a few scales on the piano, ate dinner, then started writing this post, made a list for today, did the dishes and sat down to tackle more Genshin. I really have to put some time in next because there are several things I want to do until the end of the week (there is an event that is ending plus another thing that feels urgent but isn’t).

Then a bit of reading and lights out.

Today will be a very, very full day including grocery shopping, making something for lunch, teaching and all the other stuff.

As expected I was thoroughly zombified all day because five hours of sleep is definitely not enough for me. I spent a big portion of the day being angry at my former self and also angry at doing the dumb thing of staying up for hours after my bedtime while knowing that I would definitely regret it the next day.

I still set my alarm at the usual time, and everything took ages. I wrote morning pages about sleep and about my mindset around it and interrupted the writing to buy a couple of books, ahem.

A little later in the morning I started reading „Hello Sleep“ by Jade Wu. I had been thinking about getting that book for a while but, well, I a not insomniac. I’m just needlessly sleep-deprived.

In the prologue she writes:

So, when did you lose touch with sleep? When did it stop being an enjoyable thing and become a struggle instead?

Ouch. So, when and why did sleep become something to avoid? I remember going to bed because I was sleepy even as a teenager. I am definitely a morning person, so that’s not it. The first time in my life that I did not just go to bed when I was tired was when I met my husband and we moved together. He is a definite night-owl and that and our afternoon working hours meant that I shifted my sleep to more of a night-owl schedule. But still I would get around nine hours of sleep most nights and when I was tired I’d go to bed and fall asleep.

There is a story I tell a lot when my husband and I were on vacation on Madeira and in the morning I told him that I had been tossing and turning for ages before falling asleep and he said it had taken me about five minutes. Duh.

Then I got pregnant and had a baby and first I had trouble sleeping and then the baby would wake me up all the time, as they do. A couple of years later I actually did have insomnia, I would wake up in the night, unable to fall back asleep and get more and more stressed out about my lack of sleep.

I thought I might have a thyroid disorder, or something else was wrong and did a sleep study. And nothing was wrong.

So after that I decided that if my body wanted to be awake in the night it was its own problem, I’d just stay in bed, nice and cozy, and tell myself quiet stories. My body could take care of sleep or not but a few nights with non-adequate sleep wouldn’t kill me.

And my insomnia went away and I went back to my usual „sleep like a log as soon as my head hits the pillow“-state. Maybe with a break or two to use the toilet but that was it.

Then I decided to get more productive and become a real, full-time writer and read the „Miracle Morning“-books. Some time in 2016 or so I decided to get up at 5 am every day, regardless of when I went to bed and that sleep was for the weak.

My plan was to do a lot of journaling and writing and meditating in the morning but somehow I always ended up writing some more in the evenings because I didn’t fulfill my quota. In the end I got totally used to just being tired all the time. I don’t even know how much sleep I need anymore. Tiredness or sleepiness is meaningless because if I followed that clue for when to sleep I just wouldn’t leave my bed in the morning.

See, those are the things I’m thinking about. How can I heal my relationship with sleep? When did I become one of those dumb people who think sleep is a waste of time?

When I do get enough sleep everything is easier, I don’t lose as much time, I don’t do as much stuff I later regret, I don’t impulse buy books by the dozen and snacks by the pound. Sleeping more actually gives me more usable time than sleeping less plus doomscrolling for a few hours.

Anyway, I talked with my husband for quite some time, watched half a video about medieval knitting guilds while doing all the dishes from the 24 hours before, then did a brief research excursion on speed knitting (funny, there was a video „speed-knitting continental for beginners“ with a pretty slow knitter“), toyed with the idea of learning lever-knitting (looks intriguing and very fast, maybe worth a try), timed myself while knitting half a round on my current sock (50 seconds for 32 stitches in sticky, very dark yarn and 3-by-1 rib where I kept having to knit back because I made mistakes because I couldn’t see the stitches properly and then I went out for errands and groceries.

My husband went to the dentist and found that his appointment was for today, I made an appointment to get new orthotics and found that instead of the weeks I thought this would take I could have gone in today but I need a prescription first, and then I bought all the veggies and fruits and schlepped them home while listening to BTS.

There was an easy lunch:

And then very little time until teaching and I still needed to take a shower. I taught a couple of students with wet hair, had two students not show up at all, and was done early.

I ate dinner an some trail mix, started writing this post, made a list in my bullet journal, did the dishes, brushed my teeth and changed into pajamas and only then did I sit down to relax.

Still not quite sure if I should go for a stupid little walk today, we’ll see. I am definitely no longer so sick that I need to avoid all exercise.