I thought I'd post an update on the early rising thing. My alarm is now set for 5:15 AM, and I'm out of bed before 5:25 AM. Not too bad. I'm finding that about 2:00 PM I get this massive wave of exhaustion come over me. Total wipeout. If I sit for any reason, chances are I'll be out. The good news is that I'm out for about 15 to 30 minutes and then I wake up refreshed. By 10:00 PM, I am really wasted.
For the last two days, I've 'pushed' through the feeling, and gotten a second wind. I do some yard work or house cleaning. As long as I'm not sitting, I can make it. Today, for the first time since I pushed the clock to before 6:00 AM, I actually feel like I have some energy left this evening. We'll see how it lasts.
On weekends, I sleep-in. On Saturdays usually to 8:30 AM, and then I lie in bed and work or read. Sunday is my turn to get up with the boys, so it's usually 7:00 AM. I'm considering moving my weekend wake ups earlier as well, just to keep the pattern going. Well see.
On Tuesday or Wednesday next week, I'll move the alarm to 5:00 AM. That's pretty much where I want to be at this point, so it'll stay there for awhile.
My brother and his wife are blogging about their extended vacation. They didn't blog while traveling all over Asia, but they are blogging about their stay in the Rockies. Check out my Blogroll in the right hand column for a link to the site.
This is absolutely incredible…
Now this is really weird. I know I've seen it before, but I never blogged about it.
There seems to be some sort of block at 6:00 AM. Moving from a 7:00 AM wakeup to a 6:00 AM one went very smoothly. The alarm would go off, I'd get up and start the day. Getting past 6:00 AM has been a bit of a challenge. The alarm is set for 5:45 AM, I turn off the alarm, and hang around in bed for 10 minutes. Not exactly working. I think I'll try one more day at 5:45 AM, and move to 5:30 AM anyway.
I started getting up early in order to get more writing time. I am managing to stay off the internet, and I did write 200 crappy words this morning, but I'm not seeing the progress I want. Most mornings I've been working on a contract technical document, which is not why I'm doing this. Switching from the technical writing to the fiction writing is a tough switch; I find myself using more of a passive voice.
I'll keep plodding along. If this getting up early thing doesn't work, when I go back to regular hours it'll be like I'm getting 2 hours of extra sleep.
The WordPress conversion is complete, now that I've upgraded from version 2.0.10 to version 2.2.
I spent a few hours this morning changing the website to 100% hosted on WordPress. I no longer use or need CityDesk for the site, which is good since it's essentially a dead product.
I still have a static start page, simply because I didn't want Google and other search engines to lose all their links to me. I'll think about it over the next week or so and see if I really care about it though. Maybe I'll look into using Apache redirection to send anybody going to my start page to make things easier.
edit: The Apache 2 redirect was easy, and it's all done.
Well, my plan for getting up early appears to be working. Yes, it can be a struggle getting out of bed, but I am getting out of bed. Currently, the alarm is set for 6:00 AM. That's one hour difference in two weeks, which means another two weeks before I reach my goal of 5:00 AM. On Monday, it will be set back to 5:45 AM and the next stop on Thursday or so will be 5:30. Here's to hoping it keeps on working. As a side note, the kids are pretty much back to their regular time of waking up.
Speaking of kids, both the boys are in soccer. R has games on Monday and Wednesday, while J has games on Tuesday and Thursday. Both sets of games get them home past their normal bedtime. This schedule is driving me crazy, and we still have 6 weeks of it left. Aaaarrrggghhh!
I've also gotten out of the habit of posting this:
Reading
Description and Setting (Ron Rozelle)
Writing
Technical Documentation for local company.
I didn't realize until today ('cause no one told me) that posting a message was REAL slow. Well, I fixed that. Post away with all speed!
As I've mentioned here before, I started a local Writers/Critique group. One of the rules that we instituted was that you should have something to critique every meeting. We did allow for the occasional missed meetings, but we were looking for an overall participation rate. Last meeting, I didn't drop anything off, so in order to follow my own (stupid?) rules, I need to have something for this meeting.
When I write, my first drafts are bad. I have sudden POV changes, I change from third person present tense to third person past tense on a whim. I haven't yet put any first person POVs into a third person POV work, thank goodness. I really can't hand in the first draft stuff for critique, it'll get torn apart, and rightfully so.
For the last few days, I've been moving my first scene from its first draft stage to something more solid, something that fits in with what a scene should be (POV characters goal moving through to POV characters disaster, with multiple motive-response sequences in it, blah blah blah). I've found it to be exceedingly slow work. The thing is, I'm enjoying it. I like going through and making sure things are structurally correct. I enjoy sitting on a word or a turn of phrase, making sure it brings across the emotion or sentiment I want. I thrill at making sure my similes and metaphors bring out the imagery I want, like the work of a fine painter on canvas.
My problem now is, I wanted my first chapter (three scenes) critiqued the next meeting, and I should have handed in my work last Friday. How am I supposed to get this done by todays extension date? Aaaargh!
As an add-on: I prefer to finish a work before I start revising. The momentum of generating new material builds on previous work, a cake made of many layers building to create a finished product. I hope that revising before I've completed the first draft hasn't taken the wind out of my sails. (Ugh, cliché)
So, I've tried getting up early. Since it's only been going on for five days, I can't report too much. I'm now getting up at 6:30 in the morning, and I'll do that until Wednesday. On Wednesday I'll switch to 6:15 and see how that goes.
Of course, since I'm up at 6:30, my oldest son is now getting up before 7:00. He used to be like clock work and wake up at 7:15. Let's hope that doesn't continue, since the reason I want to change my wake-up time is to avoid the kids and get some writing done.
I was talking with a friend the other day about kids TV shows. The 'Treehouse TV' kind of shows: Backyardigans, Sunny Patch, Dora the Explorer, etc. It's amazing how a supposedly adult mind can get sucked into these things. Sometimes, when the kids leave to get dressed and brush their teeth in the morning, I'm still watching the show to see how it ends. Yuck!
At least we don't watch Barney or TelleTubbies!
And finally, my youngest got very upset the other day. He found a book of his called Snuggle Puppy A Little Love Song by Sandra Boyten. He was upset because he looked for it all Mothers Day and couldn't find it. And now that he found it, she wasn't around to read it to/with him.
Addendum: I'll be at Winnipegs local Science Fiction/Fantasy/Gaming Convention this weekend. KeyCon is held on the May long weekend of every year. Last year I met and talked with Robert Sawyer, and this year it will be Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moeste, which should be fun.
