Guilt Within Your Head

I really don't like summer. The heat combined with my allergies tend to keep me up, which makes my usual bouts with insomnia all the more unpleasant. This week, as the mercury has taken up permanent residence around the 90 degree mark, I've felt like utter crap, just really sick since late Tuesday night, with my only real repose being the mid-morning hours where I can actually get a little cool air going.

If that wasn't bad enough, I've been chasing deadlines all week, and while I'm not missing them, I'm not quite where I want to be by my own schedule. I know it can't be helped, working while feeling bad is like running with ankle weights, and there's not a lot I can really do about it. I torture myself, though, because as big of a procrastinator as I am with my own work [firmly believe the really great stuff comes, like diamonds, from the pressure], I do like to keep my schedule, and falling behind means I really don't get to work on any of my personal projects.

I'd like to be writing another entry as far as my vacation goes [re: Diary of a Southern Gentleman], I had a rather cool idea for a couple of comic books I'd like to work on [re: Dr. Beyondo, something else], and there's a short I started almost a year ago that I want to get back to. But there's really no time for anything creative when I'm playing catch-up with work, and with stuff around the house, and I'm desperate to not wind up one of those poor bastards constantly bemoaning the fact they have no time to do what they want. The whole idea with the strange way I've chosen to live is supposed to make all that possible, and when it doesn't, I get irritated.

Creative spark has just not been firing like it should be, and I've been spending so much time with technique, and with style, that I feel like I'm neglecting the fact that, hey, I should be doing new work. Also, an artist? An artist would be rad, and nothing kills me more than seeing all these comic book tandems doing great work, and churning out stories all simpatico-like when I can't even whip out a script to have no one to hand to.

And I'm just going to say it, I blame this heat. Thompson said he "could never properly explain himself in this climate," and while I know he was referring to Vegas, for me this humid weather is keeping me from functioning at anything but half capacity. And I'll just say it, I feel guilty about it, about not producing, about not blogging, about not being able to muster the energy to even link things on Twitter in a regular sort of fashion. And that coupled with not sleeping puts me in this zombified state at five in the morning looking at Facebook and posting music videos mostly because of how easy Youtube has made it.

Being a laptop user without a desk also adds a whole new, crotch-roasting dynamic to the season.

I guess the ideal would be just to get away from the computer, do some normal, pen-and-paper writing, and get out and about and enjoy myself. Certainly a lot of that sort of thing happened while I was in Boston [every night, and every morning actually -- it was so weird just having a time when it was quiet and I could write]. But there's also something very... unfinished about that sort of writing. Notes are just things to be transcribed later, as is prose, or any other sort of story. You have to sit down with keys in front of you eventually.

I don't like this. I vaguely wish I could just... reverse hibernate.

Anyway, this week, and this weekend, is a wash. I have plans for something fun Sunday, and today is going to one of my last deadlines [for the time being]. Hoping things will cool off, or I'll rally, and I can get my shit together come Monday.

Cheers.