wherein Liz cordially detests her own brain chemistry

Thanksgiving itself went fine, my breakfast with Susan on Friday went fine, the drive back to Ithaca went fine... and somewhere around Friday evening I seem to have started sliding into a blue funk. I can tell by my near-complete lack of motivation, the way simple errands keep falling out of my head, and the stupid, sleep-destroying obsessive reading search pattern I always fall into at these times. (Obsessive reading is a sign that my subconscious knows I'm drifting and is trying to find something outside my own head to latch onto. It is not a very effective way of keeping hold of the outside world, but it's a longstanding pattern dating back nearly eleven years. Not-especially-funny story: depressive reading binges are how I discovered fandom in the first place! Ha. Ha. Ha.) Actually, the slide may have started before Thanksgiving, but the disruption a holiday and a family gathering cause to my normal routines can easily disguise the disruptions a blue funk causes.

God damn it, this is not the time. I have Things To Do. I cannot afford to lose two or three weeks to generalized blecch, lurking gray fog, and increasingly bizarre sleep (or lack of sleep) schedules.

...

I really need to stop by RadioShack on Wednesday en route to the grocery store and buy a cheap travel alarm clock. Then I will put it beside my computer, set it for 2am, and turn it on every night when I sit down to read/write/whatever. Assuming I then pay attention and don't just reset the damn thing several times running (which is what tends to happen to my main alarm on my days off from work), that will ensure that I get at least seven hours of sleep each night, and potentially up to eight and a half hours on days when I don't have to be at work until noon.

Yes.

That is a good plan.

I will do that.