crunchysteve

For some days, I've seen people mention the Martha Wells Humble Bundle offer and gone 'nah, I don't need it, I've got most of the Murderbot stuff, I DON'T NEED IT'.

And then someone posted that it has the short stories, and I nearly caved. And then someone shared it on Tumblr, and I don't remember what was said, and I was like 'it won't hurt to look, right'?

I will tell you that I did not cave because it has a Murderbot book I have either not read or have entirely forgotten reading (and may not, in fact, own). I did not cave because of short stories, for I noticed not the presence of said short stories. I caved because nearly the first thing I saw was The Emilie Adventures, which I know not if I will love, but has been in my wish list many many years (best guess: 2018, which is the copyright date of what I think is the first Murderbot book I read, which was at the time the most recent. The two Emilie stories are copyright 2013 and 2014, but by the time I tried to acquire them, no legal avenues worked).

So now I have 14 ebooks, some of which I have read and some of which are short stories, and I do not have the oomph to put them in the acquired books list (which has a gaping hole in it in which I either bought no books, or did not record them), along with the three that turned up ... yesterday (and one I really wanted is not sodding available and my money has been refunded. I hate this 'warehousing glitch' or whatever the excuse is, it happens so sodding often).

At my last psych appointment, I reported back that while getting my evening tasks done earlier was great, and for four nights I'd successfully gone to bed at a reasonable time, it hadn't lasted. I had continued to get the tasks done (most nights) but had lost the ability to then go to bed afterwards -- I'd adjusted to the new normal, and 'finish my list' was no longer 'and it's bed time' it was 'and it's time to read fic / flirt with tumblr / etc'.

(aside: the expression on the psych's face was priceless. They said approximately 'You did the homework?! only teachers do the homework!?'. And here was me feeling that I'd half arsed the homework. Which, yeah. )

Building on that success, I've moved my bedside lamp down from the top of the bedside shelf (say, 1.1m up) to the shelf that is the same height as the bed. This enables me to read in bed with just the lamp on, and not have a really bright room. And it will surprise no-one who knows about sleep and light and screens, putting the screen away and then reading in low light on paper? My insomnia is dramatically reduced.

I'm now waking up before the 7am alarm more days than not. But what I'm not feeling is rested. I'm obviously getting 'enough' sleep in some way, or I wouldn't be waking, but I'm not sure I'm getting enough sleep cycles. Or maybe it is that I've got a lot of stress happening, and I'm just burning through all the oomph I have.