Challenge Day Twenty-Seven

I am so tired.

So, staying up late, then getting up early, then running hard all day, drinking and dancing my ass off at a wedding, then staying up late again does not do a body good. I woke up barely able to think straight, and I would not have gotten out of bed but for hunger, and the dog. I struggled to write anything, was immediately overwhelmed by trying to lay down tracks in Logic Pro, stared blankly at all musical instruments, you name it. I also am still struggling with sewing machines against this project I’m doing for a friend. I swear, the garment is possessed. I sewed for about an hour today, and I’m only maybe 60% of the way through. There was lots of swearing.

The only thing that didn’t hurt my brain or make me anxious was reading, so I spent multiple hours in the pages of The Poisonwood Bible, trying not to feel guilty about not doing other things. I’ve got four days left after today, and I feel like I’m tripping up close to the finish line. Why do I feel like a failure for not doing the things that I imagined and assigned to myself? Did I set myself up for that kind of “failure” by trying to do more things than are reasonable? So many questions, so little time.

Daily Challenges

StretchingI did a little bit of stretching throughout the day, but I didn’t do it right at the top like I have been. I’ve also had a headache all day, and it’s hard not to think they’re causally related.
1SE
Intimate Time
CookingToday’s Menu: ummm…..well, we didn’t have brunch yesterday, so today I went to Macrina and picked up a variety of pastries for us to enjoy with the fruit already in our house; by the time our next meal rolled around, I just didn’t have the energy to think about making anything, and I didn’t really want leftovers, so we ordered Chinese food. They sent us three fortune cookies, so Howie got one too.
Reading (Poetry)October 27 is Sylvia Plath’s birthday, and I read “Morning Song” by her. It begins with birth, and then works toward a partner snoring in the middle of the night. I imagine she woke up and couldn’t fall asleep again, and so wrote a poem about her lover’s snoring.
Reading (Fiction)As mentioned before, I spent two or three hours reading The Poisonwood Bible. Everything seems to be getting impossibly sadder for the characters, and I can’t tear myself away from their struggles.
Reading (Nonfiction)Thanks (I think) to a Facebook post that a friend shared, I ended up learning about the Battle of Liberty Place in Louisiana. Basically, in 1874, the people of the state elected a Republican (the liberals of their time) as governor, but the Democrats (the racists) weren’t having it, and named their own guy. When the federal government sided with the Republicans, angry white Democrats stormed the capitol and occupied it for a few days before peacing out (Malheur Wildlife Refuge style, except that no one was ever prosecuted for anything). There was even a monument to the valiant Democrats (sore losers) until 2017, but I’d never heard about it before.
MusicDoes it count that I played with the drum options in Logic Pro?
Postcard Poem
I started thinking about all the different words related to being alone, and then it struck me as ironically funny that we have so many words around the idea of “one” so I wrote a poem about it:

To solo is remarkable,
solitary, a punishment;
singular is exceptional,
single, something to correct;
you may be lonely or
simply alone, lone, one.
Curious: so many words
for being on your own.
– Sarah Reebs, 10/27/2019
Trash PickupI did actually pick up trash today, but I forgot to take a picture of it!

Today’s Challenges

Today, Guy and I were going to record a song together, and I was going to lay down some backing tracks, but then I spent about fifteen minutes playing with various options, and became very quickly overwhelmed. I kept intending to come back to it later in the day, and it never happened. My updated goal is to simply do all these things before the end of the month. I’ll see where tomorrow takes me.

And because the whole day has been like this, I wrote and published my Humans of Interest feature piece, but I can’t tell if it makes any sense because my brain hurts. I also included some photos that I’m not sure I have permission to use, so I’m waiting until tomorrow to reread/edit my piece before I make it public. It is published, though, privately—I checked it off my list!

Except for the songwriting challenge, I feel like everything after today is going to be much simpler than the past couple days have been. And even the songwriting might go better, if I can just get more sleep! (I’m not off to a good start, am I? ….she says at 2:30 AM.)


Featured image by Volker Glätsch from Pixabay