It's the night of January 1st. I'm sitting outside in the midnight air, snow under my feet with only a hoody and jeans on, skate shoes crunching the ice under the bench. The cold air helps my head. It makes me think clearer, and it's as if the worries that I flounder in dissipate alongside the heat leaving my body.
Im writing this because I want to write everyday of this month. My ultimate goal, one that I revel in privately is to take over the world, but before I do that, there are a few more challenging tasks to address. The nature of them would be akin to mental illness.
Depression walks beside me, it numbs my brain while paradoxically hurting my head, and it rings in my ears like screeching sirens ceaselessly.
So, without dragging this out much further, short of lying down and dying, my only real options are to continue to suffer the angst of what feels to me to be a suffocating brain, or to systematically dismantle the elements that contribute to the insidious nature of it--depression. I cannot even summon the will enough to tackle this problem unless I sit out in the cold. Otherwise I just don't even care to try.
What are the basic elements of the human experience. Physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. Let's start with physical. Sleep, diet, exercise. Let's start with sleep.
Proper rest is essential to a healthy lifestyle. I'm not sure if I qualify at this time as an insomniac as I do typically sleep more or less every day or night. That said, on several occasions I have gone six plus days without sleep. And I have hallucinated and lost touch with reality as a consequence. I mean by that, that for periods of time I was incapable of telling the difference between my dreams and reality. But even now I often go a day or two without sleep. And when I do sleep, I do for what might appear to be days at a time.
I am certain proper sleeping habits will increase my desire to stay alive and make my head hurt less. So January is sleep.
Everyday in January, excepting this day as I have already failed this goal I will be in bed with no electronic devises before 11pm and I will be out of bed without going back to sleep by at least 6am.
I intend to write everyday but not necessarily about my sleeping patterns. I simply want to attempt to sleep better and see how that affects my life and in turn my writing. Really, this is an experiment. A personal one, actually. So, I'm just saying that I don't intend to write for an audience as I did with my road trip, but I am not closing this blog off by any means. This will be the only post that I post to Facebook.
Oh, and I'm sorry if you were interested in ancient literature. I have more pertinent things to attend to.
So, happy New Years everyone. Stand up, tackle a new project, and change the world.
And lastly, on a very somber note. I do struggle more than anyone knows, but I want to emphasize the fact that there are a lot more people out there who simply feel that there is no reason to go on. There are people who hurt in ways that cannot be worded. There are a lot of these people. It is heartbreaking. And what's more, I'm pretty certain it's getting worse every year. We as a people need to stand up and fight for what's right. Don't lie down, don't give up. Believe in something more than yourself and stand up. Love others and do what's right.
2016. Here we come.