NaNoWriMoWeUp4

Day Twenty-Two: 1,314. Still not doing well to recover my lost average, but this wasn't bad. I would've stuck with it, but I've got an early dentist's appointment tomorrow.
   Almost thought I was going to start in the evening, rather than at night, and then I wouldn't have had this problem, but it's an ongoing process... I'm trying to find consistent will power [or a way of living that'll support whatever sleep cycle I want would be nice!], so fingers crossed.

Day Twenty-Three: 3,543. Nice! Two big bursts [steady now...] have seen me take a chunk out of my deficit [still euphemistic?]. Did the wine help or hinder? Is this the start of better, prolonged practice?
   Who knows!

Day Twenty-Four: 2,042. A bit 'meh'. I was treading water for a bit, struggled for motivation halfway through and had sneezing fits just as I was finding mojo...
   Still, not bad. Only about seven and a half thousand words to go now. Seems the end is in sight...

Day Twenty-Five: 540. More done on the bus. Not ideal.

Day Twenty-Six: 937. I let football take precedence. I feel that going ahead so early with my word count has diminished my drive, which is exactly what I didn't want to happen really.

Day Twenty-Seven: 2,169. Despite a lovely trip to Liverpool [hopefully more on that to follow], found time to crack out a decent amount of content. Hey ho.

Day Twenty-Eight: 376. Wrote with TV on and a phone game being played... It's no wonder I felt like I was banging my head against a wall [please don't try that at home kids. Or anywhere else for that matter...]. Now have to write over my original daily aim [1,667 words] each day to reach the overall goal.
   Down to the wire!

Coffee Gone

A month or two ago, I was listening to the radio when a piece came on about caffeine detoxes. I'm not really sure what it was exactly that made me almost instantly [no pun intended] give up caffeine myself. I think it was the almost holy grail-like idea that it might help me sleep better. As I know all too well, my sleeping patterns absolutely shatter my ability to be productive when I've got no job/university schedule to get me up and at 'em, so going cold turkey seemed like the gleaming catalyst I was looking for.

I got the headaches pretty badly, as advertised, within the first week, lasting for about five days. But after that, I must say things have been better. My sleeping pattern hasn't miraculously fixed itself, but I find it easier overall to get to sleep. Getting up... well that depends what time I went to bed, so, as I say, the lack of coffee didn't fix that - I need to do that 'bit'. But the tiredness I feel isn't usually so absolute, and the energy I have [if any] is somehow more stable...

Of course I really miss the taste and the reckless derring-do you feel when you order that tenth coffee of the day, giving a non-peaceful two-fingered salute to the establishment and all other 'suits'. But, unlike with alcohol, the social side is not hampered. If I'm meeting someone at a cafe, I now enjoy some crazy fruit tea-type things [quite like minty ones, actually] - don't make no difference to me.

So I guess the whole reason I'm writing this is just to spread the word. I know it's a dull thing to do [as is any diet, or just anything that helps really. How fun are burgers, beer and basting random passers-by with Marmite? None of those things help anyone particularly, but we sure crave them], but hey, you never know 'til you give it a go [please excuse the rhyme].

Peace and love x

Hey

Erm yeah so I finished my 5 minute script assignment a while ago. I've done redrafts and all the rest, I'm just looking over it for technical problems and then I reckon I'll be as happy as I can be with it. If us creative writers redrafted as much as we wanted to, we'd never let our work go for publishing. So tomorrow (or later today to be accurate i.e. after I've slept) I gotta do my self-assessment and annotated bibliography so all is pretty much well.

I need a shower then too

After I've slept, I'll have my 24 hour take-away test paper from my literature module to contend with. We've been given 24 hours (from around 1100 hours tomorrow til the same time next day) to write 2,000 words, plus or minus 10%. Hmmm. Probably not best to try and get worked up about it before sleep but, judging by the St. Patrick's Day celebrators making racket nearby, it'll be a while before I drop off... This paper is on renaissance poetry. I know what you're thinking; we all know so much about this topic that anyone could do this assignment in no time, but I still worry...

I think I actually had something interesting to write about today. I wrote it down too. Can't find it now though :-(

I'll just leave you with this thought: how amazing would every sport be if an egg and spoon was somehow incorporated. Footballer's goals would only stand if their egg was on their spoon when the ball crossed the line and penaltys would be given if an egg fell off inside the box. Tennis players would serve boiled eggs to each other. Cricketers would try to avoid 'eggs before wicket.' Rugby players would just crush a load of eggs... Contact sports would obviously be the messiest...

Pictured is a worn-out me wearing green in honour of St. Patrick who, I confess, I know nothing about... Oh and thanks today (yeah yesterday if we wanna be pedantic) to Jess - who is hopefully coming to Edge Hill next year - for semi-successfully getting Eminem's 'Guess Who's Back' stuck in me head.