Utterly exhausted

I'm nearing the 24 hour mark for wakefulness. I'm not even entirely sure that sentence made a lick of sense, I'm so tired.

While a 24 hour crunch session would've been a breeze a decade ago -- or heck, even five years ago -- it's not so easy anymore. It's actually just a function of having both a toddler and a night job. Admittedly, I'm lucky enough to have a partner who's as invested in the monster as I am, so that seriously helps. Still, flipping my schedule between waking up at 7am and going to bed at noon is hard on the mind, the body, and very probably the soul.

However, it did mean that I got quite a bit done last night, writing-wise. A couple of thousand words, and some really good headway into chapter four. I'm pretty damn proud of it, actually. This is the first time in a long time that I really remembered how much I enjoy writing. Not just making up stories, but the actual work of putting words to (digital) paper. I didn't reach quite the high word count as I'd hoped, if you don't count blogging or social-networking. I'm trying to focus less on the number and more on plugging away and having a good time rather than feeling that it's an incredibly dreary chore. If it took me ten hours of flailing around, languishing in bed like a blob, finding anything else to occupy me from laundry to pocket frogs just so I could get in four solid hours of real writing? I'm going to call that a win.

Tomorrow, the ratio will be even more favorable.

One thing about the work schedule vs. monster toddler is that I've learned to survive on little to no sleep acquired at extremely odd hours. Of course, I do mean just survive and not really function. I also haven't mastered the art of driving while under the influence of exhaustion. This is something that often becomes disturbingly clear to me as I try to drive home from work after a particularly long stretch between naps.

On that note, I'm off to bed. Hopefully I'll have something more coherent after I've gotten a solid eight hours in dreamland.