Twiddling My Thumbs

We had our office Christmas luncheon today and revealed our Secret Santa's. We exchanged names and have been getting and giving small presents for the last couple of weeks. Lunch was good and it was a lot of fun watching over the last week when people got their gifts. I got candy and body butter from Victoria's Secret and some lotion from Bath & Body Works. Actually the person I drew also drew my name so it was amusing when the reveal came today.

As most of you know, I've been in fairly dark places the last week. I apologize if anyone is bothered by that. I wish I could say it won't happen again. I can't. At the moment, I'm better. I have gotten some much needed rest. I went to bed last night at 9:30 p.m.. I've said before I am pretty sure that lack of sleep is one of the biggest problems and it makes everything else profoundly worse. I have noticed when I don't sleep, I become severely depressed and distraught. Everything snowballs.

With that early night, I got up at 6 a.m. this morning! That's a lot of sleep. I was so tired I could hardly stand it. It was such a dreadful weekend that I think I was just spent by Monday morning. When I got home I was nearly a zombie. And I was frustrated about going to bed so early but I simply could not stay up any longer. Once in bed, I was out in in minutes

I'm doing something you will think very odd. For the last two nights, I have turned on one of my Spanish language tapes when I went to bed. Last night I only woke up once that I recall when there was a change of speaker on the tape. It only last 45 minutes anyway.

I've used this technique for years to learn things. I did it all the time in college, taping my notes and listening to them. I've recommended this to probably half a dozen other people and each one who tried it said it was tremendously helpful. My theory is that hearing your own voice actually helps your brain accept the information. There were several information intensive course I had and this worked for me. I need to find my pillow speaker, though. I am just using the player's speakers and last night I had to turn it down. Sunday night it didn't bother me but it did last night. I finally got a comfortable level and was fine but I recall the speaker pillow was really good.

I'm trying to brush up on my Spanish and I figured that a good way would to get my "ear"in tune by letting it play when I was asleep. I read Spanish fairly well up to a point; I'm rusty. But understanding spoken Spanish is difficult for me because I've never got to use it. I'll let you know if I can detect an improvement. I plan on making recordings of my own voice soon and see if that will help with my spoken Spanish, too.

I began editing The End of Winter this morning. Yes, this morning at 7 a.m. I wanted to start this weekend but when I'm so mentally stressed and tired I simply can't function. I was very upset by not being able to do any writing this weekend. This particular story is probably one of my favorites and I'd really like to get it presentable. I have a good group of writers whose opinions I trust so I think I'll know if it is worth the effort. But if I can't keep my focus I'm never going to be able to do this. I'm beginning to think I'll never be clear headed again. Surely if I can crank out 20,000 in one week I can edit an already written work!

Now, I should get back to work. I'm here twiddling my thumbs and I'm thinking about asking to leave a bit early today. I have 3 hours of personal time and if I don't take it I will lose it at the end of the year. Maybe I should wait until Friday and take it all? I'm already wanting to go home so I don't know.

Hope you all have a good Tuesday.