“I used to do a little, but a little wouldn’t do me, so a little got more and more…”
– Mr. Brownstone, Guns ‘n’ Roses

I know it isn’t anything rare to admit to using controlled substances these days. Recovery and rehab are really just to-do list items these days for those in the limelight. I know I’ve complained about my new writing schedule on here, and said how hard it was to maintain, but I did seek outside help to keep me on schedule and it caught up to me fast.

Here’s the problem: I have what you’d call a physically-unchallenging job. A mouse potato, to use the hipster parlance. I do 45 minutes of cardio at the beginning of the day, and then well… I sit around a lot. What I’m saying is I don’t come home from a day at work exhausted, because most of the time I work at home to begin with. Which means, my sleep schedule needs to be tied to being tired, as there is nothing else happening from which I need to recover. No one on my shift called off and I had to cover half of their section. I never have to keep running in back to check if something’s in stock. You get the picture.

So, if I’m not tired around eight o’clock at night, that means I’m not going to be rested when I get up to write at 4 a.m. And this is where the controlled substances kick in. To kick start my day, I drink a mocha upstart energy shot. Which is often followed by a lot of iced tea. And, when you’re tired and need to not be tired, caffeine isn’t any unique retreat. It’s more of a national epidemic. Plus, cocaine is a simple carb, and therefore not allowed on my diet.

The problem when you’re tired in the morning and have to take caffeine to push through is that you can misjudge the amount of caffeine, and then when 8 p.m. rolls around, you’re even less tired than the night before, and more tired at 4 a.m., and the cycle repeats.

So, it’s been a bit of diminishing returns like that for the past week or so on the book. I’ve worked on it every day, but am I giving it the attention it deserves? No. And that isn’t acceptable when you put it in the context of how much I’m giving up as a result as far as night entertainment and all.

This weekend, I’m doing something I’ve done before, and I’m going off the caffeine. There’s really no need, as I’m giving myself enough time for a proper, restful sleep every day. So, I figure I’ll wait until the weekend to let my headache start, and by Monday, it should be out of my system.

Being tired makes it hard to be joyful in the morning, and enthusiastic about working on the book. And that’s the place I need to inhabit.

So, looks like I’ll have to stock up on my Roobois. I have some roasted barley here that can be steeped as a tea, as well. For some reason, only drinking water is boring, and everything else interesting has sugar, but these are minor concerns.

So, there’s my version of a tweat. “Jeff says he’s giving up caffeine” just doesn’t intrigue me as much as a blog post, heh.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 7:24 am and is filed under diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.