As we start in on the actual writing portion of the House of Ink (the mentorship program I am in), I have decided that my writing journal needs to evolve. Writing on the computer seems to make it so that I get into the writing mode. I don’t know if it is the process of throwing out the word salad onto the virtual page, or what… but it works for me. At least for now.
This week (a day ago) I was facing another day of being overly tired. Since my dog went through her issue in the hospital I have been sleeping downstairs with her. In fact for the first week or so, my wife and I both were. Since her eye has healed, we have been trying to get her to sleep upstairs like she used to. Thursday night she was not having it. Since she wanted to go downstairs, my wife decided to take her down and let me sleep.
It worked – somewhat. I slept fairly well, getting 6 hours of sleep. The dog woke up twice, coming upstairs to find me. At 4:00 my wife gave up and put her in the bed with me and went back to lay down. The dog didn’t sit still as she still wanted to be in her chair, she just wanted me down there too. So I carried her down to sit in the chair with her while my wife slept down there a bit before work.
I have said often that I am an emotional support human, and people chuckle at it. This is the reality of it though. She would wake up in the middle of the night and need to find me. And if she does it on her own, she can get lost if she loses track of where she is. Luckily, I don’t usually sleep through the night anyhow. And I have been known to go with less sleep than normal at most times. On the upside, I always have a dog to snuggle with. The dark side of that is training her to not have to sit in my lap while I write. It also means that if she is hurt that she will shut down with the vet, but complain and cry to me as soon as she is touching me.
And I wouldn’t give it up for anything. The task for me is to figure out working around these obstacles. So that is my focus walking into this writing phase.
Getting to Know Your Gorilla 