lofty aspirations, and what i did about them

So at this stage of the game i think it's pretty much decided: my crazy schedule is turning back to normal--i.e. up till midnight, down till seven. it was actually kind of scary how fast i snapped back, although half of that is due to Mass Effect, which for some reason i waited until now to get (i know, i'm horribly behind the times). If you've played it you know there's something about that game that makes it really hard to quit, hence i'm back on the night shift.
If i were to make an educated guess, i'd say i'll probably never do something like this again. It's not because i didn't like doing it-- if you've read any of my blog you know i quite liked the change-- it's just that i'm too used to going to bed late; i loose too much active time by going to be early and getting up just as early, which seems like a twist of mathematics at first but let me explain. When i get up at seven, i have to get ready right now, otherwise i'm late to school. But when i get up at five thirty, with lots of time to spare, i don't rush myself. by shower and breakfast takes longer than it normally would, and i in effect lose time. plus, as i've said before, i'm better at night than in the morning.
However, it's not like i just did the project and now everything is back to the way it was before i even started; i think on weekends i want to try to wake up earlier-- more around eight and nine. incidentally, i won't have too much of a problem with that because it'll get me to the saturday track practice that i've kept promising coach i'd go to but haven't actually attended yet. and i might not get to this weekend either, because there is a possibility i'll be hiking in mud caves in the desert instead.
So yes, this concludes my time shift project as well as my blog. The outcome: it's not life-changing, i didn't get any grand epiphany [not that i was looking for one anyways, but you never can tell], and afterwards i'm pretty much back to the way i've always been, with the exception of weekends. I wouldn't call it a waste though, at the very least i've had fun, and even though 'sleeping habits' isn't really anything to make a masters out of (except at those fancy colleges where they don't really bother with things like degrees, or professors for that matter), i just might have pushed those horizons of mine a little farther forward.

Beginnings, Endings, and Mikasa French Countryside dinnerware

woke up at seven today, which actually isn't a failure on my part, or my alarm clocks' (yes, i have four of them, none of which usually get the job done) part. I am actually officially done with my project, and have been ever since last thursday. I, in fact, no longer need to get up at five thirty.
I'm just not sure if i like getting up late anymore.
As i've said earlier, losing two hours of the night--my peak--absolutely sucks. But if it means i have that much more time in the morning, i'm not sure i'm ready to change back to the way things were. For once it's like i actually have it together; i was leaving the house at seven fifteen or seven twenty and getting to school fifteen or twenty minutes before i needed to be, not to mention i was more relaxed and ready to open my head and let my brains ooze out every morning. today and yesterday morning were both rushed, like they always used to be, and i'm not sure that i like it anymore.
but i don't want to go to bed a ten anymore either.
I keep telling myself that i'll find some sort of balance, but i haven't yet so far, although i have to say both today and yesterday, despite staying up till midnight, i managed to wake up a whole six hundred seconds earlier than i usually would-- i can only attribute that to my body having gotten used to its new schedule.
And then there's also the problem of relaxation.
in the morning is fine and all, and it is indeed a good way to start my day, and i like it; but... there's school hanging over my head. at nights there's absolutely nothing; just dishes and then a vague 'i should probably sleep sometime soon' feeling around 11:30. i can relax, as it were, without any kind of solid deadline or responsibility. the only problem with this is, if i go to bed at ten, and dinner/dishes/homework takes until ten or even nine thirty, there's not really any time to do the things i want to do, e.g. minecraft, borderlands, or, as of yesterday (and the reason i was up at twelve forty finishing my second draft for creative writing), mass effect. because with any of those games, you start to play and half an hour later isn't enough-- you're just really getting started. and on monday i reach a sort of boiling point. my homework took me way longer than i expected, i was tired from monday track workout (which, if you don't know, is the hardest of the week), i still had the draft to do, which i'd forgotten about, and on top of that the sink was, yet again, full of dishes that i didn't want to do. oh yeah, and i was supposed to do some blog entry somewhere...
And i'm sort of weird: i have a really, really long fuse, but once it reaches the end, i get really mad or really frustrated really quickly over really tiny things. really, i do (sorry, couldn't resist). monday was the end of my fuse. so as it happened i persevered till the end of my math and physics, then just said screw it all and went and did whatever the hell i felt like for however long i felt like doing it for. and that was why, when i came to my senses at around twelve or so, i still hadn't done the dishes, the blog, or the draft, and had to settle with just the draft.
and i'm not sure how i got on this subject but sometimes you really just need to say something, and i guess this was one of those sometimeses.
so, as some sort of lame follow up, i don't know what'll happen timewise for me. i think probably i'll just go back to the way i was, but some of me, quite a large chunk, actually, wants to keep my mornings just as the other side wants the nights. I don't know, we'll see.
I do have one more entry, so maybe this'll all be clearer tomorrow.

finally woke up at a decent time today- try 12:45 ish. i think yesterday i got up at around ten or eleven ish, but it's okay because it's the weekend.
recently-- as in in the past couple days-- i've been thinking about what it'll be like to finally go back to 'normal' when this project is over. i'm definitely going to be happy to have my nights back, but at the same time i kind of wish i could keep my mornings. as i've said previously, getting up before anyone has a legal right to makes the morning feel special. Not to mention i've been consistently getting to school on time. *sigh*, if only i could survive on four or five hours of sleep...
what i actually think is going to happen is i will get to bed later, at my normal time, but get up a little earlier than my normal time- like probably around six thirty or six forty five. that way i have time to eat a little and shower and still get to school on time; all i'd be doing is shifting my free time from the morning to the night.
and if i actually end up doing that consistently i'll be pleasantly surprised.
the first few days will be no problem, because i'll be used to waking up earlier, but after that...
see, i'm only getting up as early as i do for this project because i'm making myself get up. once i no longer have a good reason to get up earlier than seven, i doubt i will-- i've tried in the past and it hasn't worked too well.
oh well. for the sake of not being depressing and pessimistic as hell, i'll change the subject now.
The reason i stayed up so late these past two nights was because of something called Minecraft. if you know what i'm talking about, please continue reading. if you don't, just let your eyes glaze over or hit that handy 'back' button in your internet browser and go watch youtube or something. anyway, these last two nights i've been experimenting with redstone, which i've never really gotten the hang of using because i've never really tried to. however, i now have battlements-- think this:
36 dispensers, all completely full of arrows, in a 9 by 4 grid
One lever
some clever redstone repeater work
and presto, you pull the lever and they start shooting until you pull the lever again. I've also done a room with one doorway which gets blocked by lava once you enter, as well as a dispenser that starts firing forever once you step on the pressure plate in front of it-- it just keeps on firing regardless of if you're still on the plate or not. i think i want to try making some sort of lock or something next. what i really want to do is a trick mansion where all this trippy stuff happens and you're trying to get through it, but that won't be for a long while, if ever.

I'm actually writing this post at 6:20 today, and making what i suppose you could call a constructive use of my time. this morning and last have been almost perfect- i got up at five thirty to five forty five both days (with me getting up is more of a gradual process than an action) and yesterday i had a whole hour to mess around in before i needed to think of anything remotely scholarly. I have to say that was nice and relaxing; i swear having free time before school makes the whole first half of the day go slower.
So yes, an interesting thing happened this week- i forgot that the due date for the rough draft was today, and while i had been intending to give myself two days to write it up, i actually only got two or three hours last night, half of which i spent sitting dumbly in my chair wondering if i could get away with cobbling some of my old stories together for a project. In the end though, i did write a new piece; i used an idea that i've been playing around with for quite a while but haven't ever written beyond the first page. I tend to do that a lot-- i'll come up with a kickass idea that i totally want to write, but just not right now. So instead i write like the first page or half-page, or maybe a collection of short scenes throughout the story, and use that as a jumping-off point for when i have the time and desire to write the actual thing. I call them 'story buds.'
The one i'm writing now is something a bit different than my norm. mostly i just do quasi-existential 'slice of life' kind of sci-fi stories, but what i've always wanted to try was sci-fi horror. this one is definitely horror. i finished the first section last night-- it's going to be several projects-- and i almost didn't want to turn my lights off. And when what i'm writing affects me that much, i know something in it has to be good.
well anyway, that's what i've been up to. now i think i'm going to be up to some good old Japanese animation...

Forgetting oneself, and camping

i've been forgetting to put up posts these last few days, so here goes.
thursday- at least i think it was thursday, was interesting. i finally woke up on time after my battle with the time change (I won, kind of). In fact, i was so successful that i woke up four different times on thursday: two, three thirty, five thirty, and six-ish. ugh. i think the deal is this: i have this wierd quirk where i can, if i really want to, tell myself when to wake up. the only problem is most days i don't want to. all i really do is before i fall asleep that night, i tell myself something like 'i'm going to wake up at four' or 'i'm going to wake up at noon', and usually i do (although granted i don't have to tell myself to wake up at noon- i do that naturally). the only problem thursday was, i tried to be smart. i told myself hey, if i'm getting up at half past six because my body thinks it's an hour earlier, i'll just tell myself to wake up an hour earlier than that- 4:30 aka 'much too early'. for some reason i think my mind took the latter interpretation, thus the very odd wake-up times.
On the plus side, friday went off without a hitch. i woke up nice and early, showered, and ate while watching an episode of Ghost in the Shell (classic sci-fi anime) before going to school. i have to say, for all the trouble i go to to actually make this project work, when it does it's one of the more relaxing things i've done. for once, this past week i've actually been awake for first period. admittedly, going to bed at ten each night is a drag, because i'm essentially a night person, but i try to comfort myself with the fact that i make up for the time lost with the time gained in the morning.
This weekend, i was up at Riverside for UCR's discover day. and actually just yesterday [saturday], i submitted my SIR to there, so that will, one day, be my alma mater. yay! anyway, i'm proud of myself because, as is my custom, i stayed up late friday night (in this case, till 12, my norm for weekdays :D) but despite that got up promptly at- i think it was around seven? unheard of for my weekends. of course, that was partially because if i had slept in, i would have missed the welcome breakfast, and one should never pass up the opportunity to indulge one's gluttony on food one has not bought oneself. today, however, was more my typical wake up time- 11:30. oh well.
so by now you're wondering, 'okay, he mentioned camping in the title. where's the camping??' i'll tell you. it's right below this sentence.

The reason i mentioned camping was because i've finally figured out that feeling i get in the morning when i'm getting ready for the day and it's still black as pitch outside. it's what we used to do when my family went on trips. in order to hopefully get ahead of traffic, we'd all wake up before dawn and pile in the van, which we had packed the night before, and then take off. i have several fond (i'm wierd, okay? don't judge) memories of waking up in the van on the way to arizona or some such other place, after having fallen back asleep, and seeing the sun rising off the distant low hills out the right side of the van. i'm not sure why it's the right side, it just is. so anyway that's the feeling i get-- like i'm getting up before everyone and preparing myself for some grand adventure that'll take me to new places.
then i go to school. :(

lofty aspirations, and what to do about them

so basically this blog is going to follow my progress for the creative writing project i'm doing. just so everyone's in the know, here are the rules i have to follow:
1] get up each morning with enough time to eat breakfast and shower with at least half an hour left over before i need to go to school.
2] get enough sleep each night to be able to go to school and track without any kind of drop in performance.
if i follow these, i'll obviously get to bed earlier than my typical midnight deadline and get up much earlier than just twenty minutes before i need to be out the door, hence the personal time shift.

this morning was actually the first in a few days i've been able to get up on time. what happened was this: I started last thursday, and was doing fine-- i even got up on saturday at about eight, which, if you know me, is pretty much one of the signs of the apocalypse. then a rather unfortunate thing happened.
to be clear, i never once stopped getting up at five-thirty, which is about when i need to for the project. the only problem was, on sunday and all the days after, five-thirty magically became six-thirty because some old dead guy named Benjamin Franklin thought it was a good idea. nobody mentioned this time change to my body, which continued to get up at what it thought was half-past five.
this morning, however, i forced it to get up at half-past ungodly, and actually managed to get some time in before i had to leave. funny thing though; today apparently is a late-start day. oops. i think i would have walked around campus in a confused, tired stupor if someone else hadn't been there and realized our mistake. so as i'm writing this it's now 8 am, and i've just come back from school. Now if only i didn't have to return at nine...