Sleep deprivation.

I feel like I'm constantly sleep deprived.

I'm so fucking tired, yet I can't sleep. Didn't somebody write a song about that? For some reason I only seem to sleep 4 hours a night, even though I'm in bed for at least 7. I usually wake up a couple of hours after I lie down and lay there semi-awake-semi-asleep for some time until I drop off. I started exercising again too so I could get my body tired so I would fall asleep easier and stay asleep. So far, it's not working.

I've started getting nightmares again. It's nothing new for me to have nightmares, I've lived with them all my life, but the intensity and reality of my nightmares is increasing. They're becoming more real, and there are times when I know I'm asleep in a nightmare and I try to throw myself awake so I can escape the desperate fear that grips my psyche when my mind is in another state.

Does a dream become reality when the dreamer believes it is so? I mean, what if a dream becomes so real that the dreamer can no longer distinguish between the reality he left and the reality he is in, can a new reality be created, like a shell around the old one?

If you think about this for too long, it all starts getting very matrix-ish; you start to question just what reality is, and how we know and understand and interpret what it is. Who's to say dreams aren't as real as the waking world; you're just not permitted to stay there long enough to personalise it and make it feel like home.

I once read a philosopher in the UK – I forget his name now – saying that the more people that believed in a reality, the more real and encompassing it became. Because of this "universal law", Middle Earth did actually exist as it was born out of all the people who had read the books (the movies were not around back then) and given themselves over to the power of their belief.

Perhaps that's all reality is in the end; just an image we sustain in our heads that we believe in! Perhaps the reason the world can seem so fucked up at times is because we all believe in the really bad stuff collectively as a human consciousness whole.

I can see there is a lot of energy in a thought, which is why we should be more careful with how we shape them.

Padwanna!

 

View from my window

I've built an office in my flat in what should be the small dining room, but since I am not the kind of person that throws chic dinner parties – my tastes for entertanment have always been much more exotic bohemian – it's always been my internet computer room. A chick friend took me to Ikea a few weeks back (I did my best to avoid the kitchenware section, but we ended up there for half an hour anyway, and on a friday night of all times, so I now consider myself officially "middle aged"), and I bought a massive big commercial office desk. Surprisingly there was almost no pain putting it together, thanks to the chick who has furniture building skills any carpenter would have been impressed with, and now I sit at a desk facing a large window view of the outside world.

My flat is on the second floor. When the office window curtains are open, the world can look in and see me, as easily as I can see the world outside. For the first couple of weeks, I used to sit at my desk with the curtains closed. I wasn't comfortable having them open when I would sit down there, no matter what time of the day or night it was. I can't really articulate in words why I felt like that either. I guess I just didn't like the feeling of strangers looking at me when I was doing something deeply personal, like sitting in front of my computers. It's not that I have something to hide, but there is an intimate world behind the screen that I get sucked into, and it's not something I share.

Today however, for the first time, I was sitting here, at my desk, in the late afternoon, with the curtains open. The sun was glowing bright orange and shining through the thinning branches of the trees across the street. Each of the branches becoming more bare with each passing day as their leaves turn light brown, then dark brown eventually falling to the ground. People were strolling through the falling leaves; some walking dogs; some walking kids; some walking hand in hand; and some walking alone, yet all of them walking through the falling leaves. There was a serenity in that moving moment of scenery that was beautifully accompanied by some silky smooth lounge tunes from my favourite radio station ETN.FM in the background.

I realised at that moment, that my beautiful view was not just about what was in front of me, but also being a part of it. To see something, and in turn being seen, makes you part of the canvas that is the picture of the world.

I've not closed my curtains since then.

Padwanna!

 

Autumn storm

There was a storm here last night. It was quite fierce. The sound of the wind gusting up against the window woke me up in the early hours of the morning. There is something about the chaos of a storm that resonates deep inside of me, making me feel comfortable with the raging environment only meters outside of my touch.  In some ways, I always feel a little disappointed when the force of a good storm is spent, and the sun begins to peak out of cracks in the lightening clouds. Even nature can’t keep up the intensity for long periods of time, without wearing itself out.

Padwanna!

 

My birthday musing

Well today is my birthday, the last year of my 30's has begun. I feel like it's a time of change for me this year more than any other, simply because I feel different this year; more calm, and more self assured. It hasn't come easy, but I look back on my decade of being 30 something and realise that it's been one hell of a wild ride. Noone could ask for more of an experience than what I've had, and I doubt there is any other experience I would have wanted to have had instead.

Clint Eastwood once said that a man finally matures at 40. I actually can see now that he was right, which makes me feel really sorry for women, because they have to wait until their men have grey hair before he stops acting like a child. In that way I think women are stronger than men are as they have to put up with so much more childish shit from the person they share a bed with.

So it's been a good day for me, I've talked to friends back home as well as here close to me. I've eaten loads of my favourite Tim Tam chocolate biscuits that my uber good friend Lena sent me via special delivery from Coles New World, Nerang. And I've enjoyed some simple pleasures that make me happy, like movies and writing.

It's a good day today.

I always wonder too what the next year will bring. Looking back some pretty cool, and trippy things happened the last 365 days. I never would have guessed that such things could have even happened at all. It's that mystery in our lives that makes each day truly exciting; never knowing what can happen, and then something totally unexpected comes along. I guess this is why life is so hard to give up; we never get tired of the mystery. My grandmother is in her late 80's and she still talks with the enthusiasm of a young girl when she recounts the days since our last talk on skype.

I've got only one resolution this year; say goodbye to my 30's in a year of style! After all, the memory has got to last me the rest of my life! :)

Padwanna