Search Results for: sleep – Page 16

Twelve months ago I got a direct message on twitter that said, more or less, send me an email RE the job we discussed. I think it’s the only message I’ve ever received on twitter that made me cry with relief, ’cause it meant there was a chance of getting the hell out of my old job. It wasn’t just that my old day-job was bad – I’d worked bad jobs before. My old day-job actually went past bad and delved into the level of seriously toxic. There were only six people in the office and they were all at war with one another, and the manager had never really figured out why they’d hired me. When I signed my employment agreement there was a big empty space under my job description, and they never actually got around to filling all that empty space in. Occasionally I’d answer phones, or make deliveries to clients. Those were good days. On the

There are many things I like about my current day-job. Many, many things. I like the people I work with, I like earning money for doing things that are interesting and challenging, and I like the fact that there’s discounts at the cafe downstairs so I can stay relatively caffeinated throughout the day. This is just an illustrative handful of things I like, but you get the picture: my appreciation of this job covers a lot of terrain. That said, I really miss staying up late. I miss spending time in the world after 2:30 in the morning when everything is quiet and I start to get that tired-but-not-quite-tired-enough feeling which results in quiet pondering and pages of scribbled notes. I miss the freedom of mainlining a whole season of a TV show I’ve discovered on DVD in one fell swoop, confident that I’ll have the time to catch up on sleep. I miss reading in bed. I miss catching my US

There’s something rather pleasant about writing in hotel rooms. For starters, there’s nothing to distract you, especially if the room you’re renting is marked by a list of things that don’t work: lights, television, the hotel’s broadband network. Hotel rooms endeavour to be pleasingly utilitarian at the best of times, and once you remove those little creature comforts there’s really nothing to do but go out, sleep, or write. And I’m in Rockhampton for work at the moment. Fritz the Laptop is getting a pretty good workout as a result. It’s kinda odd, ’cause I feel like I should be complaining about the various things that aren’t functioning in the room, but mostly I’ve just found them to be a pleasant surprise. It meant I did things I wouldn’t ordinarily do, like take a bath in the hotel bathroom and dance to the light of the laptop screen, and go to bed at a reasonable hour. My only complaint is the hotel

So after setting myself the goal of blogging every day in the coming week, I’m sneaking this one in under a technicality (specifically, the one that says a new day doesn’t actually start until your sleep and wake up in the morning. It makes sense in my head, even if the clocks disagree). It’s one of those rare Saturday nights when none of my neighbors are having a party, so the flat is remarkably cold and quiet. Dark too, since I’ve replaced the broken office chair with one that’s actually comfortable to sit in and that allows for prolonged periods of sitting and working and not really noticing that sunset slipped past and you missed it. Fortunately I have defrosted spicy tomato soup to ward off the oh-right, I-forgot-dinner-too hunger pangs. The downside, now that I’ve stopped, is that I don’t really have the option of not-noticing the cold anymore. I find myself wishing I’d invested in fingerless gloves. Or, at least,