On Getting Enough Sleep, and Relaxing, etc.

At last, it’s Friday! Which means I get a second shot at having a relaxing weekend. I’m not sure quite what happened last weekend: I think it started with a very late-night viewing of Inception (quite interesting) on last Friday night, and after getting to be no earlier than 2AM, I was thrown off my sleep patterns for the rest of the weekend. Monday rolled around (followed by Tuesday), and my brain just fuzzled. Plus, it was just a busy week at work anyway, which probably wasn’t helped by my fuzzy-brainedness.

Writing was terrible this week. I started off well, and then, like a hot pile of soap-slicked China plates, it all came crashing down in a heap of anti-productivity. This put me in a terrible mood, which I’m sure people felt during the course of the week. Even now, my patience is frayed thin. I’m tired. I’m grumpy, and I’m annoyed that I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be this week, even though I felt like I was redlining-busy everyday.

So this weekend, the goal is to relax. Well, the goal tonight and Saturday is to relax. Catch up on my sleep. Reset the internal, dysfunctional clock. Breathe easy for a day. Get the stress levels back down to a good, reasonable state. Soothe the snippy temper. Get back into that good, happy groove-mind. I’m going to ban myself from internal nagging: if I don’t get anything useful done tonight and tomorrow? No problem.

I might write this weekend. I might paint. I might lay around and watch movies I’ve already seen a million times, and be bored. That’s okay. If I want to play Plants vs. Zombies for six hours straight? Totally fine. If I want to nap the entire day away? Also good. The only thing on my to-do list is to relax.

Sunday, I do have some things I need to get topped-out. I need to clear out my last submissions, because those folks have been very patient. I need to do some hard-core book formating. I need to get a proper, updated head shot, ‘cuz let’s face it folks, that chain-saw picture is about two years old. I need to write up a short bio (ugh, I’m so bad at those. Almost as bad as I am at picking a restaurant for dinner when I’m already starving). :-P

But today, and tomorrow: it’s all about relaxing. And I’m very much looking forward to getting back on track.

Also: I lost count of word-count. I can tell this is going to be something I have to train myself to watch.

APEX ANNOUNCEMENT: Apex Magazine Issue #15 is out! You should check it out and read it. *pokes!*

APEX BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT: There are a bunch of really neat posts on Singaporean SF at the moment, which you should check out if you’re as interested in international science fiction as I am! Plus, my blog post “SLUSH LESSONS: Balancing Pain–Things to Consider When Throwing Rocks At Your Character” is up on the Apex Blog also! :-) You know you want to read it. *Jedi mind-tricks: This is the post you’re looking for.*

UNRELATED NEWS: Editor-in-chief of Apex Publications, Jason Sizemore, is launching a new venue called The Zombie Feed. Featuring reprint fiction (brought back to life) mixed in with some fresh blood, The Zombie Feed will release a work of short zombie fiction weekly, starting with HP Lovecraft’s “In the Vault” as this week’s story. You can subscribe for the year for just $15, or buy each story individually for a measly $1.00! If you like zombies, or brains, you’re bound to find some favorite short fiction appearing here, and perhaps find some new authors of undead stories that you’ve never tasted- I mean- “experienced” before. Check it out!