From a CNN article on insomnia:

The condition is classified as primary or secondary. The latter means that a patient may be having trouble sleeping because of a health condition or medication.

Primary insomnia is not related to any side effects. It is considered its own disorder that can be broken down into two groups: sleep-onset insomnia and sleep-maintenance insomnia.

Like its name, the sleep-onset version occurs in the beginning of the night when someone tries to fall asleep and can’t.

“Sleep-maintenance insomnia is much less common,” Schulman said. “It occurs when somebody can go to sleep, but wakes up once or several times throughout the night and has difficulty resuming sleep.”

This “sleep-maintenance insomnia” so totally fucking describes me it’s not even funny.

Pretty much for the last six months, I’ve been waking up between 4:30 and 5:30 am every day and not being able to go back to sleep. My alarm is set for 6:30 am during the workweek, and like clockwork (heh) every morning I wake up, glance at the clock, and force myself suppress a murderous rage because it’s anywhere from one to two hours before my alarm is supposed to go off. And 95% of the time I never go back to sleep — I just toss and turn till the alarm goes off at 6:30 and then somehow drag my beleaguered carcass out of bed to prepare myself for work. It’s awful.

But this past week, I’ve been trying to trick my insomnia. The article mentions later that you can fool your body by getting up if you can’t fall back asleep after 20 or 30 minutes. The theory being if your body becomes used to being in bed for hours at a time, unable to fall asleep, it becomes “subconsciously ingrained.” So, that in mind, the last few days I’ve been up at 4:30, 5:45 and, today, 5:00. If I’m consciously aware that I’ve been awake for more than 25 minutes, I get up and get dressed. Today I was ready to roll at 5:30 so I went to Tim Horton’s with my laptop and did some writing. It was kind of peaceful, actually. And I got some stuff accomplished.

So, yeah. Insomnia. It fucking sucks, but at least it’s no longer completely fucking me.

JAB

Earlier this month Warren Ellis wrote a lengthy post in which he — somewhat haphazardly — discussed the lack of original content found on the Web today. That a goodly number of the blogs out there exist basically to collate links from the rest of the Web and share them with the world. Ellis then declared that a change in the equation has become necessary for the Web to continue to mutate and thrive:

The world does not need another linkblog. What is required, frankly, is what we’re supposed to call “content” these days. When I were a lad, back in the age of steam, we called this “original material.” Put another way: we like it when Cory and Xeni are the copy/paste editors for the internet, but we like it better when Cory writes a book and Xeni makes an episode of BoingBoingTV.

Let me say now that I think a blog dedicated to collecting cool links is certainly fine to do and can be damn fascinating. Nothing wrong with it. Indeed, it’s what I’ve done here quite a bit over the years. But I think Ellis has a point. As much as I enjoy poring over a myriad number of blogs for interesting little tidbits, it’s usually more engaging when someone is offering up some sort of original creation — be it a story, a piece of music, or a short movie (Joss Whedon’s “Doctor Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog” comes immediately to mind).

So I agree with Ellis. The Web would be a more interesting place to hang out if more people used it as the medium in which to inflict their original stuff on the rest of the teeming masses (those masses who, of course, can at least use a computer). That being so, I’ve decided to do my part as a Planeteer and resuscitate this here blog and start posting fiction.

I’m not exactly sure what this entails yet. Probably I’ll start with some older stories I wrote and still like, but for one reason or another wouldn’t be otherwise published. I’ve got a ton of ideas for short shorts which I might sort through and actually write. Excerpts from my longer project might find their way out here as well. Like I said, this is still an idea-in-progress. I’ll stew on it some more and in all likelihood start posting some older stuff to test the waters. However, it is time for this site to evolve.

And like its spawn, it’s high time for the Web to grow up, move onto the next phase of its life. Puberty happened back in the late nineties, when shitty personal sites were the norm and companies couldn’t wrap their corporate heads around having a “web site.” Adolescence has been going on for most of the last decade as far too many trends have popped up and then just as quickly vanished. Now it’s time for the Web to get a grown up job, move out of its parents’ house, and stop going to fetish clubs and find a nice girl or guy to settle down with.

Nah. Scratch that last one. The Web wouldn’t be the Web without its infinitely diverse array of bizarre fetish porn.

JAB