No sleep for the wicked, apparently.

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The world’s on fire. At least, the little bit of world folks like me inhabit. The government in the US is very vocally out to get us – not that I think Mango Mussolini actually gives a shit about us (I wrote this meaning trans people, but he doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. So for clarity, I mean that his actions against trans people are just because the right wing spent decades making us target of division number one and so we’re convenient to rail about and cry about decency and degeneracy in a way that’s not at all reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Not at all.) – and yes, to an extent the current swathe of anti-trans executive orders, along with the rest of the orders all written in crayon by a man with less intelligence than any single one of our chickens will end up in court.

And yes, many of them will get struck down, or are written so badly as to be unenforceable. But the chaos and the exhaustion of us all is part of the plan. Not Trump’s plan, obviously. The man couldn’t plan his way out of a paper sack – all he has is avarice. No, the plan of his Project 2025 backers who would like the US to become some kind of christofascist oligarchy. Well, more of a christofacist oligarchy.

Anyhow, that’s not where this is planning to go — but what I write rarely goes where I plan, so why should a blog post be any different?

Thing is, a couple of days ago, after the drive-more-trans-kids-to-death EO, I was trying to sleep, and failing. Instead, after listening to the quiet whirr-click of my 1960s flip-clock whiling away the morning minutes for a while, I conceded defeat and hauled myself out of bed and tried to place my anger into a box. Or maybe a storage unit – or perhaps a disused factory. Something large enough to hold it out of the way it so I could try and do something less awful than lying there thinking dark thoughts about the future. And I tried to write.

And I did, a bit. I wrote and chatted online. And then around 5am I tried to sleep again and failed. And at 8am I gave in and got up because I had a singing lesson and wanted to get at least something done before then. Y’know, breakfast, morning ablutions, that shit.

And then I rolled through the day in my sleep deprived haze until I got a triple shot latte as a fuck I’m so tired treat, and then, of course, wrote. Not a ton. Like my ADHD is still bad enough since I only medicate when I need to actually get shit done – and I’m not talking about the triple shot of caffeine. But despite my tiredness I threw down like 600 words. Then kinda exhaustedly sat. Then sat and watched half of Rent with my wife, who had an urge to watch that.

And then as the evening wound down and as my prog took its effect I was like – right – shower and ready for bed. And I step out of the shower and of course my brain promptly fills with an entire bloody scene, dialogue and all. This conversation is playing out and I’m like “I’m going to have to write this down or it’ll be gone and every time I’ve tried to just write notes I get to the morning and it’s like pulling teeth.”

So there I am, my brain warring with my physical exhaustion, perched on the sofa rattling of another 600 words in an hour. Which eh, it doesn’t sound like much. I can write a 600 word blog post pretty quickly, but I’ve not been “””””good””””” about my writing. I’ve been very distracted. So I’m both pleased and peeved, because y’know, I’d like to sleep.

But it does lead me to wonder what it is about that time of night, because often just as I am falling into bed, or getting ready, that’s when my brain will fire up. Then or when I’m in the middle of a run (which less so at the moment since my knees are sulking and my run is currently six minutes, not thirty). Both of which are inconvenient times for me to be like “oh I need to write.” Because contrary to my brain’s opinion in these matters, I do, in fact, need to sleep. And also I can’t carry even my MNT Pocket Reform when I’m running.

And working out what it is about that time – something about where my brain’s at – it’d be really handy for getting me to writing at other times. So if anyone has any idea do let me know.

KateWE

Kate's allegedly a human (although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise). She's definitely not a vampire, despite what some other people claim. She's also mostly built out of spite and overcoming oppositional-sexism, racism, and other random bullshit. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, she's here to reassure that it's all fine.