“You won’t die from a lack of sleep.”
Those were words I employed frequently in my practice. At one time I could even utter them with sincerity. After all, internship, residency, and then life in family medicine, while raising two small children, had proven how little rest I actually required. But four days now without enough shut-eye are stressing me, peeps. I’ve turned life into a road trip, except that instead of driving my parents nuts with the perpetual “are we there yet?”, I’m making myself insane with “is it bedtime yet?”.
Oh. Did I mention that it’s my own fault?
See, after months of feeling discontented with most everything I read, I made a few decisions:
1. I wouldn’t force myself to continue any book that lost my attention. (That means even books that are 90% complete. Yup. I’ve been reading fiction where I honestly couldn’t care less if hero and heroine end up together after 320 pages. So they’re gone, gone, gone and gone.)
2. I’d hone in on a few authors who consistently provide a good read.
The result? A stack of books that are destined for Goodwill/the library/the secondhand bookstore, a tidier bedroom, a sense of freedom, and a depleted gift card on account of Ms. Georgette Heyer. Yay! 🙂
Know what I discovered next? Having once again found great pleasure in the written word, which began with an all-nighter with Venetia, I was able to tolerate some of my other old book friends. Yes, the plots might be a tad cheesy. Okay, there might be three adverbs per paragraph. But I don’t care. Turns out I haven’t been missing sleep nearly as much as I’ve been missing out on fun.
Why that should be is a long and convoluted story which bores even me, so we won’t go there. But in the spirit of a lighter heart, here are a few fun links you might enjoy:
1. This one’s a must-read if you are a New Moon fan. It’s probably even more enjoyable if you aren’t.
2. And one more that’s a fun version of Lady Ga Ga’s “Poker Face”:
How about you? Are you running short on sleep this holiday season? Is it your fault? Got any fun links to share?
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Hope, where do you find these [half-naked] men? With these pictures around, I couldn’t sleep either, LOL!
I have a whole humor list on twitter that helps keep the fun in my day. My favorite site is http://theoatmeal.com/. The zombie apocalypse comic is hysterical.
Glinda, I just google and pray I won’t find anything to subject me to nightmares. 😉 The results of yesterday’s endeavour will go up in a few days. You might want to keep an eye out for them. (I’m just sayin’.)
As for the Oatmeal, THANK you. That’s exactly the kind of thing I need in my life right now. I know my son will enjoy that site too.
Teenage sparklecide… too bad he didn’t go through w/ it. Yes, definitely funnier for us Twilight haters, methinks 🙂
Bane, my favorite line involved sparkles too. 🙂 I’ll have to plead to Twilight-Ignorant status, rather than Twilight-Hater. I have yet to read the books and haven’t seen New Moon yet. My daughter and I will take it in over the holidays.
I have to say that I enjoyed the second picture WAY more than the first one. 🙂
If you had an ereader, you wouldn’t have to worry about lugging books out the door.
Laura, about the pictures: hahaha. Just trying to make sure my blog keeps abreast of the trends, yanno. 😉
Wrt lugging books, I’ve given some thought to the advantages of an e-reader. But believe it or not, the lack of clutter actually feels like a disadvantage to me. I know what’s happened to the way I use music these days; I find it very easy to impulse purchase songs I don’t care for all that much. Also, without the physical reminder of CD’s or albums around, I honestly seem to forget about a lot of the stuff I’ve bought. The physical presence of books helps me realize I have “enough” and reminds me to read at odd moments. Guess I’m just weird, huh? I’m quite kinesthetic in how I relate to the world, though. Just the way I’m made.
As a devoted Kindle owner and avid ebook reader, I have to say that it only partially helps with the clutter angle. Unfortunately, many books are not yet available in an ereader format. Some the prices are just to high for a digital copy. Bottom line is, I still buy printed books that I can’t get for the Kindle. And because I tend to gravitate to the ebooks first, I think I have MORE books sitting around than before. So, I think you can have your ebooks and your clutter, too.
After bragging to the Cherry Tarts that I wasn’t pulling all-nighters, I stayed up til 3 a.m. to finish the main part of the annual report I’m writing.
Tonight, I AM sleeping.
Fun? Hehe. I’ve been moving the Three Kings along an odd path through the house toward the nativity scene atop my desk. You know…along the windowsills, atop the refrigerator, above the laundry chute…westward leading, still proceeding. My silly smile for the day.
Glinda, thanks for that perspective. Along that route, I know there’s no way that my children or husband are ready to give up their paper books, even if I could. Since my daughter and I often share our fiction, we would be a hybrid household for many years anyway.
MJ, hahaha. You have such a sense of play in you, someday, some child’s going to be lucky to call you “grandma”.