Well that plan I had to stay on track for NaNoWriMo during work days hasn’t worked out. Wait… Did I even mention said plan in Tuesday’s post? Or am I just thinking I did when in reality I really said it to a friend yesterday and I just can’t remember which one I really did? (I swear that made sense in my head.)
Since I can’t remember when and how I mentioned it, I’ll say it again, or, ah, for the first time here. Whichever it is.
(Excuse my incoherent babbling and easy confusion, I’m exhausted off my ass. I feel like a walking zombie. I think I’ve had a total of about 10 hours of sleep since Tuesday morning now. Again.)
What was I talking about again?
Oh, right, the plan for writing on work days that I can’t remember if I said or not. Yes, that plan.
So on Tuesday I mentioned I had the first day of NaNoWriMo off and then I worked four in a row. I’ve gotten through three of those four days and by the Gods has it been non-stop running like a chicken with no head. I’ve been exhausted since Wednesday morning when I got up for the first shift, and it hasn’t gotten any better.
Wednesday’s are bad days period for me, especially if I have to work the morning because I also have horseback riding at night and I also have a Shard to write those days. First of all, I didn’t get to bed Tuesday night until probably about 3:30am. (It could have been a little bit earlier but Facebook was being a royal arse in the final moments that would have allowed me to go to bed a little bit earlier. Go flipping figure.) So by the time I was asleep, I got three hours of really disorienting sleep before my alarm was waking me up for work.
That shift was crazy busy and exhausting because our warehouse and corporate is a bunch of marble-less morons. (One of these days I’m going to write a blog post of just retail experience/bullshit and it is going to be hilarious.) I got home with just enough time to change and rush out the door for riding, even though I was quite sure I could have fallen asleep on my horse. It was a quicker lesson than normal — not everyone in my group was there — which was nice so I got home earlier. But by the time I got all settled at night to start writing, I could hardly keep my eyes open. They were burning and irritated, still are three days later, and I could barely focus.
So on the very first day of work shifts, I was already burned out enough that I knew 1.5k words was not happening before midnight. In which case, I settled and was happy if I made it to 6k, which was another 600 words. I managed that.
I tried to go to bed earlier Wednesday night in hopes I’d make up some of the loss of sleep, and, yeah, no, I should have known better. Took me an hour and a half to fall asleep and I woke up twice in the middle of the night. By the time my alarm went off again for another morning shift I had gotten probably five hours of sleep in which didn’t make a damn difference to my exhausted state. I still felt just as tired waking up as I did going to bed.
Yesterday’s shift felt even longer than Wednesday’s and by the time I was home, I had a decision to make on when the hell I was going to sleep next, because, guess what? I worked at fecking 5am today!
Since I was still exhausted, I tried to nap in hopes it would help enough that I could manage to stay up and write through the night, head to work, then come home and crash for a couple hours nap again.
Well, the nap didn’t work as you can probably guess. I laid in bed for an hour and a half before saying screw it and gave up. And I didn’t sleep last night because every time I have this damn shift, trying to go to bed for at least an hour or two makes me so disoriented and actually sick to my stomach that I just can’t do it anymore. (I swear these shifts are killing me.)
So I didn’t sleep, but did I get any words written?
Of fecking course not.
Not only was I still too exhausted to properly function, but my mind and want to write was nowhere close to me. It was an awful night. I managed one sentence yesterday. Just one. One measly cheating sentence just so I could update word count and say I wrote something. I feel so pathetic.
I had wanted 1.5k yesterday, too, or more. Then today I would have settled for just 1k after that ungodly shift. So in these last three days I should have had 4k all together, and how much have I written?
600 words. I’ve done 600 words.
I need another 643 words in the next four hours to stay on par, and I can still barely focus straight. I managed a two hour nap earlier, but it hasn’t really done much good.
And I still have one more shift to go, which is of course another morning shift. I’m so ready for Sunday when I’m off. I’m so ready for next week, where I have a shorter week, and not a single morning shift. And thank the Gods today was the last 5am shift I’ll have for the next two months!
Now I just have to figure out how the hell I’m staying on par for today and tomorrow. Somehow I need to try to manage 2.5k words in four hours to help put me back on track. Somehow…
It’s not a good sign when in the first five days of NaNoWriMo you’re already struggling to stay afloat. Here’s hoping I can make up that word cushion again next week and not lose it like I just did this time.
Darkling Dreams 