ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG

So when I mentioned the sleep apnea thing back at the start of April, a whole bunch of folks were like “Get thee to a CPAP Machine.” To which I nodded sagely and said, well, yes, that’s on the list, we’re just waiting to see how bad things really are.  Last week, I took twenty-four hours off work and did my first official sleep test to see how things were. I spent a couple of hours hooked up to electrodes and other stuff while I slept. It gathered data. Turns out, things were pretty fucking bad. The diagnoses for chronic sleep apnea kicks in at around 30+ interruptions in sleep per hour. I was averaging 60-70 interruptions an hour, with a couple of periods where I’d stop breathing for up to a minute and a half at a time. When I start doing the math on that, my ongoing feeling of utter lethargy starts making all kinds of sense. “We should probably get you on a CPAP trial, ASAP,” the nice lady from the sleep clinic said. Then we made an appointment Monday to start a one-month trial. I’m not sure I remember what it feels like to be a fully-rested human being, but I’m hopeful I’ll get a reminder sometime in the next few weeks. Thanks, everyone, who weighted in with their advice and experiences.

To borrow a line from L.P. Hartley: “The past is foreign country; they do things differently there.” This line has been haunting me for most of the weekend, since I was down on the Gold Coast to man a booth at Supanova and it involved seeing parts of the Gold Coast I don’t often go to. While I frequently went down there to visit my parents over the last few years, it was relatively easy to ignore the vast bulk of the city while doing that – I barely had to get off the highway to reach their house, and there was never any call to go toward the beach where the bulk of the Gold Coast lives. The Gold Coast Supanova, on the other hand, takes place in Broadbeach – right next to the Casino and Pacific Fair shopping mall, right across the road from the Broadbeach mall where I spent a lot of Friday and Saturday nights in my late teens and early twenties. It’s where one of the handful of game-stores on the Coast existed, so I went there a lot to buy copies of D&D and Vampire and, if I’m remembering correctly, one of the first attempts to create a Babylon 5 RPG. Basically, it’s a part of the Gold Coast that’s loaded with memories, which is why it shows up in the Flotsam series so much. It’s also a reminder that I don’t remember the past well. I don’t forget things that happened, necessarily, but I’ll

ONE: WRITING WHILE SLEEPY So I missed a blog post yesterday, but in my defence I was squirrelled away writing a little over 4,000 words on various creative projects. That represents nearly a third of my wordcount for April thus far, so I’m feeling pretty happy about that. Yesterday was also the point where I added the words “FUCK THE APNEA” to the top of my spreadsheet where I’m tracking my yearly wordcount. One of the reasons I feared admitting there was something wrong was the self-knowledge that I am a lazy, lazy writer. Give me a good reason to not write, and I’ll take it. I’ll happily prioritize other things ahead of writing goals. (For all the people who mentioned CPAP machines when I first posted about the Apnea – after consulting with my doctor and talking over how serious things have gotten, I’ve been booked into a sleep clinic later this month to begin a home assessment. That should be the beginning of my doctor offering non-diet-and-exercise type solutions to help with the process. Thanks for the prod folks – I would have left that process a lot longer without our advice) TWO: COME VISIT QWC AT SUPANOVA If you’re at the Gold Coast Supanova this weekend, I’ll be working the Queensland Writers Centre’ booth in the publishers area for most of the day on Saturday. Feel free to drop by, say hello, and talk writing for a bit. Ask me questions about the upcoming GenreCon and how