Imaginary time capsule

It's half past two at night, I'm meeting a friend for coffee tomorrow, I'm dead tired - clearly this is the best time to evaluate my life.

I'm no use even talking about the specifics, I've come to the conclusion that my current existence is just pathetic overall. Now if I was able to sleep more than three hours every night that would probably help my mood a little bit, but I can't and there are still issues a bit of sleep obviously won't fix.

Screw this, I'm making tea and buttered* toast and watching another episode of that outrageous space western anime.


*Apparently - and ridiculously - there's a shortage of butter in Norway at the moment? I read there's already a black market for it. Still, I think I'm going to eat mine rather than selling it to fund my excessive lifestyle.

It's three A.M., can't sleep. No surprise there.

Have been lying in bed craving onigiri like maaad. Which is... unexpected. I usually only crave sweet foods, not salty.

I think it might just be because I cleaned the kitchen today. I think I might have created this Pavlovian response in myself where clean kitchen counter -> time to make onigiris.

Man, I've even got a packet of sushi rice somewhere. I swear, if I had anything to use for filling I'd be standing in that kitchen making onigiris (which is to say, burn my hands and then get salt everywhere) right now.

Also while cleaning I found the remaining roasted nori seaweed I used for my first ever batch of onigiri - because I'd read that onigiri isn't onigiri without the nori. But then I noticed the nori didn't really taste much and was hard to chew through and I'd bought it at a supermarket so maybe it wasn't good nori, who knows, but I wound up peeling it off the rest of the batch and I haven't used it since. And I can't bring myself to throw out non-spoiled foodstuffs so the big packet of nori is still there on the shelf, staring me down. No idea what to do with it.

Man do I want onigiri.

The Clogman is having a party. He is the guy who lives on my floor, in the big proper apartment (not like me and my next-door neighbour Danish Girl, we're just lodging in two small rooms each). Thankfully the walls are very nicely isolated so all I can hear, apart from drunken shouting, is the bass from the music he plays, but it's not like the bass I usually hear when people in this building are having parties, it isn't untz untz untz like club music, it's deep and thrumming and constant, like listening to a lorry engine all night.

I miss the Architect. He was the guy who used to live in the Clogman's apartment until very recently. He played jazz records at his parties. Sometimes the Architect or his wife would knock on my door and ask me if I had various traditionally domestic items they could borrow, like milk (which I very rarely have unless I've got superspecific plans for it) or a bathroom weight, or or things like that. Which was always kind of hilarious to me, a middle aged architect and his wife assuming that an absent-minded student living alone with her cat would be more settled and domestic-minded than themselves. (Normally I couldn't help them with their request but I think it was sweet of them to assume I had these things).

I've never met the Clogman. He earned the name from the big clogs he for some reason chooses to keep lying outside the door of his gigantic apartment, at the top of the stairs where I invariably trip over them when I have to get to the fuse cabinet (which I have to do minimum twice a day in the winter).

No sirree, not a big fan of the Clogman so far.

Insomnia is still a bitch. Thankfully I'm not in one of those "have literally not slept for days" periods - I get a few hours of sleep every night, thank goodness, but it's obviously not enough.

Also it really plays havoc with my emotional state. I just spent an hour writing a thousand-word entry about how useless and worthless I am, all my anxieties about my future, and my guilt over choices I've made - and how I'm worried I might be heading into a depression again because lately I've felt so very, very numb, feeling like my personality and opinions have all been a sham all along.

I was crying my eyes out writing that entry, and then, bizarrely, I took a break to surf Tumblr, where I wound up reading an essay about the negative connotations linked to words describing women, and I noticed that, by jove, I still have the ability to get mad about gender issues.

Then I went on to read about the Wall Street occupation - the unnecessary force deployed by the police, the complete disinterest of the mainstream media, how so many are ridiculing the people who've gone there to protest... And that makes me mad too. And immensely relieved that I still get mad about these things.

And right now I'm tired, but I'm not nearly as miserable as I was an hour ago. So what if I've gone a couple of months without a job; That'll work out eventually. Meanwhile there are people out there who are trying to change human society for the better, trying to right wrongs, and I'm excited about that despite myself.

I think I'll spend the night reading more about the Wall Street occupation, trying to see things from all sides. That is, if I don't fall asleep.

I've done all my little "unwind when you can't sleep" routines; I've played Tetris, I've sketched, I've made Lupin GIFs... Actually I really feel like playing more Assassin's Creed, but I know that'd only make me forget to go to sleep at all.

So whatever, random fannish thoughts help keep those "everything sucks and what are you doing with your life anyway" thoughts at bay:

( Let's see; Assassin's Creed, Lupin, Scarface, Le Samouraï, and samurais )

Okay, so what if I just do my "going to bed" routine all over again? Make a cup of tea, watch an episode of Pink Jacket, cuddle the cat. Maybe my body didn't notice the first time.

Have a cold. Going through another insomnia phase. Drawing up a storm (smudged charcoal everywhere, will hopefully get my big self-indulgent fanarty project done in a month's time or so)

Overall, enjoying my vacation. Tiny and I watched another season and a half of The Wire (and then when I caught an episode of Boardwalk Empire on the telly I had a moment of "JESUS CHRIST THAT'S OMAR"). I'm currently at my mum's, going to accompany her to work today and possibly feel like I'm eight years old again (I remember my first introduction to computers at one of mum's jobs. Playing Snake and drawing in PorwerPoint for hours!).

Realized that even lounging in an empty house all day I don't feel even the tiniest inclination to turn on the TV. Though Get TV's ad-free radio channels are pretty great (There's nothing like illustrating a gun fight while listening to Johnny Cash. And then being violently pulled out of the mood when Neil Sedaka starts to play).

I can't think of a way to wrap up this entry, too groggy after only two hours of sleep.

So you've got a bit of an obsessive personality.

So you've got a bunch of friends who share many of your interests, but not all of them, obviously. You can appreciate that they're not interested in hearing you talk about your newest obsession for hours every day.

So you make a blog, on LiveJournal for instance. You're glad to have a forum where you can write whatever you want with little to no thoughts about coherence or presentation. Then you make friends there, friends who you respect and admire and who use their blogs to write interesting, educational, funny stuff, and you get sort of embarrassed about writing sixty consecutive posts about, say, how cool an actor who died before your mother was born is.

So you make a Tumblr, microblogging is in. You have a mode of expression that is pretty much designed to be stream-of-consciousness and as high or low-content as you want it to be. You follow some people's tumblrs and they post funny, beautiful, amazing stuff and then some of them follow you back, and suddenly you find yourself stopping yourself from posting something you like, because my God you don't want people to hate you for spamming their dashboards with caps of a stupid cartoon show you like.

I'd just go back to writing all my thoughts down in a notebook if it wasn't for how great it feels when you can enjoy something with somebody, and they might be in a different country or on a different continent and still you can both look at something and say "Aw, I love that!"

Back from the doctor's - or rather, the ER, as I was told it was the only option available as my registered doctor is on the other side of the country. Haven't slept for three days at this point. (Fun hallucinations last night included being momentarily convinced there was a fire in the apartment, and a taste in my mouth of custard gone sour that just wouldn't go away).

Thankfully I got a prescription for histamines to numb me down tonight, I'm feeling very optimistic - but oh God, I'd rather take four pap smears than go through that consultation again. I know my appearance doesn't do me any favours, but it still came as a shock to me how readily the doctor believed I was a drug addict. At first he was reluctant to prescribe me anything, it was only when I started crying (he dutifully wrote down in the journal, "The patient shows a tendency to weep when talking about not sleeping.") he agreed to help me, but he told me that I shouldn't come back.

Jesus Christ, I realize there must be recreational drug users coming there for their fix, but man, did he really think I came there to get a buzz from goddamn allergy medication? It's horrible to talk to a doctor who doesn't believe you.

But still, I'll be damned if I'm going to let him ruin my day. I'm going for a walk, gonna collect my meds, and try to enjoy the day.

OH HELLO TWO O'CLOCK ON A SCHOOL NIGHT. BEEN A WHILE SINCE YOU CAME AROUND. EXCEPT FOR YESTERDAY.

NAAAGH my "falling asleep" button is broken again. Doesn't matter if you go to bed at a reasonable hour, yawning every five seconds, that headache from too little sleep trying to nudge out your left eyeball. Doesn't matter if you more or less manage to empty your mind for half-an-hour's time, waiting to finally doze off (and then spend the next hours trying to silence that voice going "OH GOD YOU'VE GOT SO MUCH TO DO TOMORROW YOU HAVE TO SLEEP NOW OH SHIT WHY AREN'T YOU SLEEPING").

Doesn't matter if you take your fucking sleep medication...!

I really feel I play by the rules, whatever rules I've come to imagine there are to falling asleep. But right now it feels like I'm playing a rigged game. I can't win, no matter how laughably easy it looks.

What makes it worse is that it's been so long since I had these kinds of insomnia problems. I vaguely remember periods when I managed to mostly focus on how incredibly dull it is to go to bed by 11 and lie there utterly awake until the clock rings at 7. I was a complete zombie, of course, but I could observe my sleep deficit in an entertainingly detached way. I tried to mostly combat the boredom.

I would so much rather that sense of mind right now, because now I'm anxious and jittery and worried by the fact that I never understand why this happens on some nights and not on others. This is all me - there isn't an outside force that makes my hands tremble this much. Even looking over the text I've written so far is oddly fascinating, because to my eyes it's washing back and forth and up and down - not quite like water, but like how I would imagine the waves in The Tempest looking in a moderately well-off threatre production.

Whoo there they go. (Silly me had half a plan to while away the worst parts of the night playing Assassin's Creed II, which my buddy Åsmund graciously lent to me today, but something tells me that if I get a bit overwhelmed at the dancing of a wall of text I've just written, running around in Renaissance Italy finding allies, collecting feathers and elegantly murdering people (well okay that last one still sounds fun) might a bit too much for me to handle in my present state. My God was that a run-on sentence.)

You know, I've never ever, not once been drunk in my entire life. I imagine it's something between this half-cocked way of experiencing the world around you, and probably something like what I felt that time they gave me anaesthesia before my operation. There's probably more to it though, since people seem to be so fond of getting drunk.

Yes, you could tell from the second paragraph on that I'm hesitant to go back to bed. But I should, shouldn't I? Give it another go? Give it yet another go...

Hah. Like there's any chance I'll catch a full night of sleep tonight.

God I wish I wasn't wired this way, where every tiny little uncertainty keeps me up at night. Tomorrow's just the information meeting for this semester, for chrissakes! It's not like I'm freaking out, it's just... nagging in my head. It's officially the start of the semester, and I'm already a bit overwhelmed by the stuff I've got to get through:

- Writing two hundred questions for the next Trivial Pursuit Genus edition. In one month. I have to admit it's thrilling to finally play in the big league but Jesus that's daunting.

- Writing my bachelor thesis, which it turns out can't be about the Middle Ages because, uh, the degree I'm doing, Bachelor in the Middle Ages, doesn't exist anymore. Except it sorta does, because I have to finish it.

- Taking some other 200-level history course. Both the thesis and the course wouldn't be so scary, only I have to:

- Take the HIS102 exam over (and very possibly the HIS115 exam too - I've delivered a complaint to the University about it and it would lovely if they could ANSWER IT SOMETIME). And I'm still so ashamed that I failed, even though I know I shouldn't be. On the HIS115 exam I honestly thought I did a good job, but apparently I didn't. That has never happened to me before. It's... scary.

But I keep telling myself that I'll have to deal with these when they come to pass, right now I should really just... get some sleep. I don't want to start the semester this way.