Day 715: Tired and trying to fall asleep faster

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I admit I haven’t been blogging here lately because I was lazy. For about a week I was sick from seasonal allergies as well as a smallish IBS flare up, but then for the days after that, I ended up being too tired at the end of the day to blog and so I skipped it.

I’m still doing my important but non-urgent things first, because if I don’t then they won’t get done: my Japanese study, Regency research reading, checking email, a little bit of marketing work, and at least 100 words on my Hawaii serial novel.

The great part is that these important things have gotten done, whereas before, I had usually been too tired to get to them after I finished my writing work for the day.

The bad part is that they take up a lot of time before I even get to my writing work for the day. I have tried to limit the amount of time I spend doing each thing, but they still take up at least 2 hours.

I decided to try to switch my Japanese work to after my writing work, rather than doing it before. The reason is that I can do my flashcards during free minutes during the day, like when I’m waiting for tea to steep or for lunch to heat up. Then after I finish my writing, I’ll try to get around to finishing up my Japanese study for that day. I’ll see if I can do this, or if I find myself skipping my Japanese because I’m too tired after finishing my writing.

Currently, I am also doing only the bare minimum of writing on my Regency manuscript, but I am spending the majority of my writing time doing the blocking/outlining for the other books in the series. I still get confused because I have to jump from one point in the series timeline to another, but if I can finish the blocking on all the books, then I won’t have to worry about that. If I do another serial novel, I will have to remember to do all the blocking first so that I don’t confuse myself by writing a scene at one point in the timeline and then needing to jump to another point in order to block a different book.

Despite the fact I’m only doing the bare minimum of writing, I have found myself working steadily through book 4 in my series. I am also trying to increase my blocking pace, but I’ve found myself very tired lately and haven’t been working as many hours. I find myself having problems falling asleep, and then I end up sleeping late since I didn’t fall asleep for a couple hours after going to bed, and I wake up groggy and tired. I’m trying different things to realign my circadian rhythm so I can get to sleep faster.

Until then, I’ll just keep trying to get as much done as I can despite feeling tired.

Regency series:

Editing: Time spent: 3 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 15 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 282 words

Writing streak: 194 days

Blocking: time spent: 2 hours, 24 minutes

Blocking: Total number of words: 1138 words

Blocking streak: 188 days

Hawaii series:

Editing: Time spent: 3 minutes

Writing: time spent: 17 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 336 words

Writing-related business:

Regency research reading: time spent: 21 minutes

Email: time spent: 2 minutes

Marketing: time spent: 1 hour, 4 minutes

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