Eccentric Flower:199811/deliberate abuse

nineteen eleven fifteen

deliberate abuse

I didn't hear from the clinic about the bloodwork by one, so I called them. Ain't nothing wrong with my blood. Oh, little things - I've been slightly iron-poor for years, like my dad, which is why I take vitamins ... and there may have been some signs that my body has been fighting off ick for the last few days. If I were more sanguine about this (there's a pun there, but never mind) I'd take that as all the explanation I need - that I've been fighting something which never managed to make it up into more obvious symptoms, just the ache and fatigue.

But I'm not mollified. For two reasons.

Number one, now I'm really embarrassed. I see a doctor once a year at most. I don't even like taking aspirin. Rhonda, among other readers, is familiar with my stance. I'm not a medical Luddite, I just feel that doctors are for when something is seriously wrong, not for every time you feel bad. And here I've gone to the doctor and the trip was completely unjustified - nothing was wrong! I feel like such a hypochondriac now, and in my lexicon that's one of the worst things you could possibly call me.

Number two, I woke up feeling pretty chipper this morning. I'd had a lot of sleep - too much, in fact; aside from the neck and back pain I know as a symptom of too long in bed, everything was dandy. My eyes didn't hurt and I didn't feel tired. Then I sat at the computer to work (I wasn't going into work until I found out I didn't have something nastily contagious) and within ten minutes I felt fatigued again.

Then I reflected on how much I've been at the computer lately. When I haven't been working (I mean, at my job, which is a computer job), I've been writing. When I haven't been writing, I've been emailing. And when I haven't been doing either of those, I've been playing Clan Lord.

I haven't mentioned Clan Lord here, but since I got an email today saying "I love your journal! - By any chance are you the same Columbine I saw in Clan Lord the other night?" it's probably time.

It's an online multiplayer game, it's still in the test stages, and it's entertaining, although it can be really annoying or monotonous at times. It also doesn't eat my brain the way writing does, which means when I'm too burned out to write, as I was yesterday, I can still play. And it sucks you in - you can play it for hours and not notice the time until you stop.

Every time I've put in a particularly long session at the computer recently, Clan Lord or otherwise, I have been extremely fatigued afterwards.

Believe it or not, this may just be an eye thing. Computers make my eyes irritated. For years this has been an "I'm tired" cue to my psyche. So it may be that my eyes are hurting and I think I'm tireder than I am. This is supported that if I go away from the computer and do something else for a half hour, or take a walk, I feel energetic again. It's weird to exercise and feel less tired.

It might be that I can solve this problem by just rationing myself. I hope so.

Clan Lord's a self-limiting thing at this point; I made second circle yesterday morning and quickly got disillusioned - I still can't go anywhere safely or kill any of the more dangerous creatures, and I'm a moderately advanced character. I'll advance my healer character to second circle, to see what's what, and who knows, after that I may stop cold. Very little investment there.

But I cannot afford to not be able to write. It's already galling me enough that I can't focus to work on A.D.'s journal. I was focused last night, but last night all that focus went into mouth organ, it being a Wednesday.

- - -

Postscript: It occurs to me that I have, in fact, been using the computer all afternoon (despite good intentions) and the fatigue, aside from that first flash of eye irritation at the beginning, is not happening. So my lousy sleep cycle might have something to do with it - last night was the first time in several weeks where I've had more than six hours.

I didn't want to say that, because now Nonelvis will nag me about it and we'll have an argument. If I have to get more sleep than I'm getting, then I will just be fatigued all the time. I'm adamant on this. There aren't enough hours in the day already to do the things I want. I'm with Thomas Edison on this one: Sleep is mankind's biggest inefficiency.

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