04 September 2007

New mood theory

Yesterday and today, emotionally, I've been my normal excellent self, not my manic excellent self. Still, I seem to require less sleep than I had been needing until two weeks ago. Monday night I slept for 3½ hours. Then at my home group meeting, during our Tradition XI (subscription to A.A. Grapevine Digital Archive required) reading, suddenly I felt soooo tired. I let my eyes close and missed a big chunk of the reading. I didn't miss any of the sharing, but sitting there I felt like I could do no more afterwards than to drive the 8 km home and get to bed. And then when I got home, I stayed up another 1½ hours!

I went to bed just before 11:00 PM and read from the book I'm currently in the middle of—Wittgenstein's Nephew—for a half hour before falling asleep. I woke around 3:20 and felt rested enough to seriously consider getting up. But I didn't. I was afraid if I did that feeling of exhaustion might hit me again during the day. I fell asleep again quickly and got up just before 7:00. That's more sleep than I've had in over two weeks, but still less than my previous norm.

I have a new theory about why I've been in this mood. Perhaps its due to my excitement about converting from Windows to Linux. Though I've been intending to for years, and genuinely motivated by the fear of having to use Vista, I only got serious about it two weeks ago. Over last weekend, I made the major step of converting my primary e-mail client, including my e-mail address book, from Thunderbird on Windows to Evolution on Linux. It was a much easier process than I expected. Now I'm trying to get all my PIM data—calendar, scheduling, tasks and full address books—from Time & Chaos to Evolution. It's proving to be much harder, perhaps in part because I haven't upgrade T&C for a long time: ever since it acquired all the features I really wanted. These are the kinds of challenges I love though and, sure enough, it sometimes keeps me awake as thoughts about how to deal with them flood through my brain.

This is only a theory; it goes along with the others I have, the primary of which is being off Prozac, which I still am.

1 comment:

Shadow said...

hey! i get that 'i cannot keep my eyes open' daily at about 3pm and then again at 7pm. if i succumb, i'm buggered for a good nights sleep. as it is, my sleep is broken cause the doggies usually wake me up to be let out between 11+12pm, and occasionally around 3/4am, but that's not too often. so when i sleep i need to sleep well. otherwise i'm real cranky the next day....

a trick i learnt about waking up 'casue my brain is reminding me to remember things, is to keep a notepad and pen next to my bed. when i wake up with something to remember i make a note and then i at least get to fall asleep again knowing i won't forget it.