This week refuses to slow down. Between picking up two extra shifts and trying to convince myself I’m maintaining control of my life, I hit a breaking point. Part of that involved dropping into the mindset that my life controls me. Climbing out of that pit involves a heavy dose of dissociation and white-knuckling until the next opportunity comes along to snipe a renewed sense of a manageable schedule as it passes by. Then something spooks that prey like a deer out of the cross hairs, and I’m back to square one. 

The last couple of weeks progressed pretty well in the direction I want to go. Then this week turned into a mess with two extra shifts I had not planned on and the start of daylight “savings” time. (Too bad a person can’t save daylight. Winter would not seem as long if we could.) My second shift of the week started with a two hour notice and immediately followed my first shift. My next day off will follow a third 12 hour shift and a 48 hour marathon stretch, which could be a full sprint depending on how bad the time change and the full moon affects people. 

I really wish they’d abolish this daylight/standard time thing. The “energy savings” we supposedly get is not worth the loss of sleep and disorientation. Forget the “loss” of an hour in the spring, even “gaining” an hour in the fall messes people up. I’m one of them. What’s one lost hour of sleep? Hell, how many people out there have lost thousands of hours of sleep due to shift changes or chronic insomnia? It’s the shifting daylight against the clock that leaves me wondering not just when am I, but WHERE am I? Seems like “The Twilight Zone” just got real!

Anyway, I volunteered to help a fellow writer with a story and offered some suggestions after reading the chapters he’s written so far. He has a good story, and I can’t get my own creative flow going. So, no, it’s not a waste of time. At least it gets the creative parts of my brain working, and it’s slowly working to jog lose some ideas on a story I tried writing for NaNo a few years back. It’s the only story I’ve taken a stab at in the fantasy genre and might, from what I’ve been seeing, have to be my next big project. Fantasy dominates most short story solicitation, at least the ones Freedom With Writing mails out. And most of the writers I’ve come across on the groups work in that genre. It demands an excellent imagination and should be a great challenge.

Progression may be slow, but forward progress still counts as success. Right now, it’s a practice on making deadlines, and building from there.

Hope everyone has a great week! Get out and enjoy some good weather! If the weather is bad where you live, enjoy the weather in a good book!