I’m back. This is the second day in a row (or second consecutive day, I should have said) that I will babble for 2,000 words. I’m still not ready to tell a story—or at least not a full-length story. That’s not truthful. I am ready, but I’m a bit nervous to stick my toe into the water to check the temperature. There’s a tendency for someone to push me when I do that, and I’m not ready to fall headfirst. Well, not yet, anyway. I’m hoping toward the end of the week, as inspiration strikes, or, more importantly, as I run out of things to talk about here, I’ll throw myself into the fray and restart the writing of meaningless and poorly drafted stories. For now, however, I’ll convey the excitement that is my life.

I’ve almost decided that the more I write, the more I write. I don’t think there’s a time where burnout plays a role for writing too much. If anything, the burnout occurs when I stop writing or start limiting (or sacrificing) my output in the names of rest and relaxation or other things unimportant things. When I looked back to my pre- and post-Nano writings, if anything, my output increased until the fall-off period, where I stopped forcing myself to write the 2k words and started writing only as much as I felt like writing, which turned into writing only when I felt like writing, which turned into a huge rut that’s taken me a long time to dig myself out of. If this entry is any evidence, I’m still in the process of digging, and I probably won’t hit pay dirt (you get it? It’s all part of my digging analogy) for another week or so.

I lit a fire last night in my living room fireplace, the first fire in a while. The logs, which I’ve aged by the alternating process of soaking and drying (thanks to a ripped tarp in my backyard), crackled more than usual, but the fire caught quickly and burned most of the way down, so I was rather proud of my efforts. What does this have to do with anything? It’s a very good question. I’d promise to get back to it, but I’m rather sure that that would be a lie.

I laughed so hard tonight that I cried. I know that’s a cliché, but it happened: both my eyes watered up, I wheezed, and I couldn’t breathe. When I think about it now, I can’t help but smile. As I said yesterday, I’m in a conference for work this week (or at least, I think I said that—I don’t remember what I said yesterday since, like today, I wrote it while my brain was too tired). Tonight, the conference organizers decided to throw a talent revue that was served with a nicely spread Italian dinner. The talent show had the usual suspects: piano players, singers, small bands, comedians, songs with the lyrics changed to make them funnier to the attendees (e.g., if the conference was for dentists—it wasn’t--the songs would have been about teeth) The emcee (I never thought of how that word was spelled until I saw it listed on the Powerpoint slide) was particularly funny. But the highlight of the night for me was a skit put on by members of my group. I, regrettably, had no association with any of the writers or actors or directors, which was probably for the best as you will see.

L, S, and I were sitting at a red-checkered table (remember the Italian theme), watching the performances and having a genuinely good time. S went up to get more food, and when he came back, he told us that some of the guys in our group were putting together a skit, and after one of the participants backed out, they were frantically looking for someone to step in. S read the script and turned them down. He told us that it was the worst script he’d ever read. There was nothing funny in the entire script, and while they might be prepared to make absolute fools of themselves, he did not want to participate in their tomfoolery.

L and I discussed the skit, and we both decided that we couldn’t wait for it to start. S was embarrassed for them, and started making excuses to leave, but we made him sit and watch. The idea behind the skit wasn’t terrible: they portrayed scenes from Star Wars and replaced the conflict with something more appropriate to the group (e.g., staying with the dentists, they would have used cavities or gingivitis or insurance companies). As S indicated, the script was gruesome. For reasons I’m still trying to figure out, however, L and I found this gruesomeness terribly funny. You know that saying, “it’s so bad it’s good?” That’s what we thought. Out of the four hundred or so people in the room, we were the only two people who consistently laughed at everything they did from the get-go.

The main problem with the script, besides the bad writing and awful jokes, was that only about half the audience would even have got the jokes had they heard them (the audio was pretty bad, thankfully). (E.g., imagine the dentists retelling Star Wars to a roomful of medical doctors and dentists.)

In honesty, we weren’t laughing with them so much as at them. I kept imaging the writers sitting around a table (a non-red-checkered table) with papers in front of them, writing the script, and either thinking to himself or perhaps saying to each other: this is great. This is going to crack them up! Even though I don’t think it was their intention to make it funny in that way, what came out was brilliant. I like to think that one of the writers secretly pushed the script in this direction, knowing it was awful, but seeing the humor in the awfulness. The terrible skit capped off a rather fun night.

One of my colleagues described me quite well after she saw me walking out of a conference session. She said, “You’re like a Generation X’er pretending to be a lawyer.” I do sometimes think I’m too cool for my job. Or maybe I’m just too lazy. I sometimes get those two confused.

The beautiful weather returned to Seattle today. It was in the 70s and sunny most of the day. There’s something about great weather (and great comedy) that makes me feel good. Randy is still out with my cousin Nancy, who took her out for dinner. I thought about blowing off the talent revue to go with them to dinner, but I’m glad I went. (We’ve already planned a few more nights of dinners.) I think watching that skit will help get me over my terror of embarrassment for others. In the past, I wouldn’t have been able to watch that skit. I would have averted my eyes and tried not to listen or watch. I’m embarrassed as easily for myself as for others. As part of NEQID, I kept looking for ways of getting around that embarrassment. I guess laughing at it is one way. I’ll have to practice that the next time I watch an episode of “Three’s Company.”

I’m less than halfway through and I’m losing steam. It wasn’t as if I had much steam to begin with. I keep telling myself: at least you’re writing something, you’re trying. Then I think about Yoda and it all goes to hell. Of course, my thought of Yoda brings me back to the skit. The person playing Yoda (and, of course, what’s a Star Wars skit without a Yoda?) wore a burgundy, hooded sweatshirt, with two fluorescent orange coffee cups stuck to his head, which I imagine he meant to represent the ears. He spoke with a jilted Japanese accent. Did I mention how incredibly funny this was?

Today, I read a blog entry about how to become an early riser. This is something I’ve struggled with for a while, and I thought the advice was worth trying. I told you before about a watch I had ordered that supposedly would track sleep patterns. The watch took three weeks to get here, and when it did, I used it for three nights. Doolies claimed my sleep became worse during those three nights and suggested I not use it anymore. It was all for the best because the alarm on the watch, which is rather important since the watch is supposed to wake you at an optimal time each morning, stopped working. Without the alarm, it was useless. I’m still worried that I might have sleep apnea because I wake up sometimes overtired with headaches. Doolies doesn’t believe in this self-diagnosis, since she heard it somewhere that you need to snore heavily to have sleep apnea, and she tells me I don’t snore. She also claims to be a doctor, so take all of that with a grain of salt. I do.

Steve Pavlina, the author of the above blog entry, has devised an entire website devoted to improving himself—a kind of NEQID for Steve (or NEQIS), if you will (I’ve linked to it in the reads section on a trial basis). In the early riser entry, he describes how he turned himself into an early riser. As I was trying to say before the watch dragged me off track, at various times over the last five years, I’ve tried to change my sleep patterns. I think I sleep too much and lose productive time while unconscious to the world. I usually fall asleep at around 10pm and wake up at 8am, averaging over 10 hours of sleep every night. Thinking of it like that (I try not to do the math too often), it’s rather obvious that I’m sleeping too much. Even taking into account my strenuous days (when you exercise—like I do once every few months—you usually need more sleep), I’m sleeping way more than the necessary amount. With all that sleep, there are many mornings and days where I’m completely exhausted—which, when I look at it in this light, is more support for my sleep apnea theory. Take that, bad doctor!

Getting back to Steve’s entry (I’m having a terrible time forming full thoughts or sentences today. Most of this is because I’m exhausted, and writing when I’m tired is never a good thing. But this is good for me. Even if the writing is terrible, it’s still writing, and that’s all that should count these days. Maybe it’s a good thing for me to get into the “first draft” mode, where I care less about what I say and more about the content. Not that the content is very good. Okay, I’ll stop now and close out this parenthetical), his suggestion for controlling sleep is rather simple: get up at the same time every morning, and don’t go to sleep until you’re tired. He, for example, wakes up every morning at 5am, and goes to sleep when his body tells him he’s tired. His test: if when he reads a few pages, he feels his eyes closing, it’s time for bed.

On the surface, this sounds like an ingenuous way to control my sleep. If I stay awake until I can’t read, I might never fall asleep. There have been many nights where I’ve forced myself to stay up to read. I guess that wasn’t the point of his test. Okay, maybe that’s not much of a problem. I guess I’m looking for excuses for not trying this. His other suggestion was that when the alarm goes off, you sit up and not give your brain a chance to convince yourself to go back to sleep. Now that I can appreciate. There are many times where I want to wake up early, but my brain convinces me that sleeping for another fifteen minutes (or two hours) is probably better for me, will make me happier, make my children (if and when I ever have them) happier and healthier, and perhaps bring about world peace. Just another ten minutes and I’ll be there. The short of it is I will try his suggestion and see if I can work it into NEQID.

I’m closing in on the last three-hundred words of this dreadful piece. Thanks for staying with me here. I have a feeling that I won’t be able to keep up this diary-style entry over the next few days. I’m hoping that I’ll have to jump into a non-thought-out story to make up the words, which was the original goal of this typing diarrhea (I still can’t spell that word).

I’m done for. I’m going to go back and edit this piece and hope to find a few places to pad the words. As it stands now, it’s not pretty. Word count: 1,751; caffeine: terrible tasting coffee with a bit of half-and-half—I estimate it was about a shot worth, the coffee not the half-and-half; writing time: 47 minutes before editing (yes, I know, you’re asking yourself how I spent forty somewhat minutes writing something that reads like it’s written by a five year old—this sentence helped me with about 40 words. Thanks!); edit time: 24 minutes; final word count: 2,226.