Musings & Thoughts for Monday, July 10, 2023, or: Stressed Out! Tales from an Insomnia-Plagued Novelist

Come Rain or Come Shine

Late Morning, Monday, July 10, 2023. Lithia, Florida

It’s another steamy – and not in a good way – summer day in the Tampa Bay area. Currently, the temperature outside is 87°F/31°C under partly sunny conditions. With a weak southwesterly breeze and humidity at 57%, the heat index is at 93°F/34°C. We may get a brief respite from the heat in about four hours; if the forecast for today holds true, some light rain showers might pop by here in Lithia.

Of course, this combination of hot sunshine and light rain showers might result in what I call the “sauna effect.” The showers – if they appear around here – will dump some rainwater on the hot paved streets and concrete sidewalks, creating puddles. Then, carried off by the wind, the rain clouds will move out of the area, and the sun will shine again in full force, causing the water on the ground to evaporate. In some places, it will be so hot that steam will actually form and rise up to the sky. And, of course, the humidity and heat will be oppressive.

I hope that none of those “light rain showers” decide to morph into thunderstorms. It is, after all, the season for high temperatures and heavy rainstorms, and there are quite a few storm cells out over the Gulf of Mexico. So, even though the forecast is predicting “light rain showers,” there’s always the possibility that boomers might mosey on down to the Lithia area between noon and 2 PM Eastern Daylight Time.

OMG! Why Was I Up and About at 2 AM? Why?

Today is possibly not going to be as productive as yesterday because – as you can guess from the section “hed” – I had another one of those nights when not only I had a hard time falling asleep, but I also work up at a horrible hour – 2 AM.

I tried hard to fall asleep once I realized how “wee” the hour of the morning was; I planned to work on Reunion: Coda in the morning and early afternoon, then take the rest of the day off to do a few chores in my room.

That’s. Not. Happening.

As you can imagine, as I write this, I’m fighting the urge to turn off my PC, get up from my desk chair, take a shower, put on clean clothes – and do…absolutely nothing. (Note also that it’s taking me hours to write a “simple” blog post. I started this post at 10:45 AM; it’s now 12:10 PM.) That’s frustrating, to say the least.

I’m sleepy. Cranky. Unhappy (with myself, mostly). Impatient (I want to at least get Chapter 10 to the halfway/two-thirds of the way mark, depending on how Scene Two plays out).

I’m going to see if I can find a happy medium between resting and working on this July Monday. Maybe I’ll feel better and more energized after I take my shower and get dressed. And maybe I’ll write a few pages of new material for Reunion: Coda after a longer than usual respite. That’s what I want to do, rather than just take the day off due to lack of sleep.

Closely Watched Packages

In addition to being sleepy, tired, and stressed out, I am nervously awaiting the arrival of an Amazon package with a copy of the new version of Reunion: A Story. I waited until yesterday to order it; I wanted to give Amazon enough time to let the revisions “flow through the system” and thus get the most recent edition of the paperback. (I also have the Kindle e-book; as of late Saturday night, I had the latest version of Reunion, so I figured that enough time had passed and the revisions I uploaded late Friday night had replaced the previous edition.)

My copy shipped last night – Amazon doesn’t say from where – so I’m a bit nervous. It is possible that I’ll get the version that I want, of course. However, it’s equally possible that I’ll receive the slightly flawed version that preceded the current third edition that I uploaded to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) earlier during the long Independence Day holiday weekend.

As the old Polaroid camera commercial used to say, “We’ll see what develops.”