Sleep Deprivation

Posted by Colin Harvey Jan 16, 2009

The human brain is a curious organ. You would think that if you work hard, you'll sleep well, right?

Not neccesarily.

It seems that if I stop work by about 8pm, I can sleep reasonably well.

But stupidly, last night I got caught up in planning a couple of new anthologies and worked through until about 9.45. I should have exercised greater self-discipline, but parts of the jigsaw that are the proposals gradually started to take form and I got caught up in the process.

As night follows day, after I'd gone to bed and read until about 11pm as normal, I awoke at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep. The result is a day lost to tiredness and inability to form coherent sentences.

I was going to review Theodore Sturgeon's 1966 collection Starshine, but it's a bit of a mixed bag in any event. At his best Sturgeon was a master wordsmith, but while this collection has a couple of gems in 'Derm Fool' and 'How to Kill Aunty,' it also has a couple of outright duds in 'The pOd in the Barrier' and 'The World Well Lost.' Based on this collection, Sturgeon had trouble writing believable SF set in space. But give him a domestic setting, and his prose shone.

Given such an in-and-out set, a full review isn't going to happen.

Self-discipline takes many forms. Sometimes it means stopping when you'd rather go on, closing the lid on the laptop when all your instincts are to press on.