What is life?!

I have just spent the last couple of hours trying to sleep, all to no avail. Which is ironic because I spent the few hours immediately previous to that trying to stay awake. It's like my body knows which I want to be doing and decides to mess with me. My head was cloudy and fuzzy and I was blinking a lot and getting up and down a lot to stay awake for the last hour of work. Literally, at 17:06 (that is actually when I finish work) I felt grogginess and sleepiness lift almost in an instant.

I probably need to make some changes.

I have a 9-5 job (well, 8:42 - 17:06) and that is good. It's steady work. It pays regularly. There is no need for me to take it home. It does, however take up most of my day. From when I wake at about 7:30, until I get home about 17:35 is given over to work. Then I get in and have to do the essentials: y'know, eating, washing up, taking the rubbish out, ringing the insurance company, and so on.

Then, because in any given week I am usually DJing at least one night, there's that to think about. I normally decide the setlist on the fly but having a 9-5 with less time spent at home and less time on public transport, and less opportunity to sit up late listening to music makes it harder to keep up with new music so I have to make more of a concious effort to get new music and get it into sets. IT's getting harder. But I try when I can. And if I'm doing a special event with a genre or mood I'm not so familiar with, like a fetish night, or a speakeasy night, or a wedding with specific song requests that I may never have heard of, then I will plan out the setlist beforehand. That's time-consuming. I need to get hold of the music, listen to it, and figure out the best way to play it. Then there's the late nights DJing involves. I try, like tonight, to sleep beforehand but spending the only free bit of the day asleep feels like a waste. IF I can sleep. So tonight I will get to bed about 4am and be up again about 7:30am which will leave me painfully tired at work tomorrow. Then I'm Djing Subside from 8:30.

I also have my greetings cards business. I need to research and create new designs for that when I can. I also need to keep promoting my Etsy shop which currently, mostly sells steampunk and dieselpunk cards - https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/CapnDred. It's plugging it on social media - on my pages, finding groups and joining them and interacting and trying to get my name and products out there. It's drawing little things that are relevant to make sure I have content to post. It's repinning things that may encourage people to browse my Pinterest and find my cards. It's blogging like this. It's reblogging the tumblr posts of people who may be inclined to check out my stuff. It's commenting on Etsy's forum posts and getting involved in the community. I enjoy it and there's a lot to learn and I am enjoying learning. Then when sales come, I have to get them posted.

I find it hard to say no to new jobs. DJing new events that may be fun, or a new genre that I could have fun with. New drawing commissions that push me to improve or just feel nice to do.

I resent this sometimes and make myself put a film on to chill, but normally end up tweaking my Etsy shop listings while I do.

The thing with music and drawing and self-promotion is there's no end point. There is ALWAYS more that could be done. Which means whenever I get some free time, it is very easy to almost accidentally keep doing these things. Suddenly, it's 2:00am and I have work in the morning but a drawing that's nearly done, or a load of ideas for content to post, or just half an hour of a setlist to fill with a tricky transition from black metal to RnB. When I'm not doing anything actively, I feel like I'm wasting time. So I rarely chill. Jess has been great for me. We do things together often (we're doing a craft fair up in Bridgnorth on Saturday which I am really looking forward to but for which I will have had very little sleep on account of all of the above), but we also chill sometimes and I need that. She's let me rant at her about this and she's tolerant of how bad I am at making future plans. I worry about the fact I'm always tired and broke for her though. I don't like that.

All of this is compounded by the fact that no matter how long I work a regular job with regular daytime hours, my body clock still defaults to going to bed at 4am and waking around midday. It makes it hard and feel unnatural to go to bed at an appropriate time for work. 11pm would be a good time. 12 wouldn't be too bad. 2am is usual for me and it's just not enough! And 7:30 really doesn't feel like a time people should be up at all. My body clock wants me to get the recommended 8hrs sleep... it's just the wrong 8hrs for sensible civilised jobs.

And for all of it, I'm broke. I spent a lot of today at work researching the Aztecs and Maya for our presentations. I was using Google Earth to check out their historical sites - temples and the like and desperately, painfully wishing I could go there! But I consider a month where I finish the month without having gone over my overdraft limit a success and one where I finish with a few bob to spare makes me nervous that there is a bill around the corner I forgot about. Being able to drive down to Bournemouth and stop in a B&B for a friend's wedding was a decision I had to weigh carefully and figure out a contingency plan for how that would leave me short for the rest of the month.

I'm always working. I'm always broke. Because I'm always broke, I feel like I can't be turning down work when it comes so I'm always too tired and too busy to take stock of the situation and change it or at least organise it to be manageable.

Writing this has helped. Now, feeling like I could finally sleep again (like I could at work earlier) I have to get up and go to work.