Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

Learning as I go

Feb 01, 2005 No Comments »

It seems I’ve wasted lots of time today trying not to waste it. I need to learn (and then humbly accept) that the body has its own idiosyncrasies. I need to acquiesce that when the body says, “Hello! I’m tired,” it really means that.

I was feeling like a powerhouse when I woke up in the morning, very early in the morning. At 5 am I was tossing and twisting, not able to make up my mind whether to go back to sleep (with sleep being a couple of light years away) or get up and do some work. Alka sensed that, as she herself had woken up, and suggested we got up.

But why were we up so early? In Alka’s case, as she doesn’t feel right these days because of the pregnancy, she sleeps most of the time during the day. She wakes up routinely to eat something. In my case, these days I’m trying to “streamline” the way I work. It seemed all my waking hours were gradually turning into work hours (I’ll very soon write why it was/is like that). It was not only pissing off Alka, even I was getting kind of, bored. So I’ve decided no matter how much work I’ve got, I will not work after 7 pm and I’ll go to bed early to wake up fresh early in the morning. At a stretch I can only sleep for 5 or so hours. So even if I go to bed at 1, I wake up at around 6.

So at 5:30 in the morning, with a hot mug of chocolate milk, I switched on the laptop and started working on a client’s PHP program. Although most of the time I’m writing web content I still take up web development work because I’m used to coding and the present clients pay good money. I worked till 9, had breakfast, did my classical vocal music practice for an hour and then resumed my work. Vocal classical music is tiring, especially in the initial stage. I can sing the entire day, but when it’s classical, I get emotionally tired because even small mistakes bog me down. Then at 1 o’ clock my music guruji came. He comes thrice-a-week to teach me. Although he is supposed to take the class for one hour, we usually get so involved that we never wind up before two hours.

By the time he left, I was feeling drained and cold. I had lunch with Alka and then came back to my chair. I felt as if stones were tied to my fingers — prodigious effort was required to type. I rested my head on the back wall and closed my eyes. Ten minutes of rest would revitalize me, I thought. Those ten minutes turned into an excruciating sleep of 3 hours!. I could neither get up nor sleep. On top of that I strained my neck and still cannot move it much. If I had gone to bed after lunch I could have been back in action in just an hour. And now, good four hours have gone. The numbing feeling is still there in my fingers. Writing this blog post has activated them to a great extent :-).

So what did I learn today? When I feel like resting, I should rest. It’ll increase my productivity and will keep me motivated and charged up. Low energy doesn’t let one work much. When I’m tired but working, I’m not using my full potential, neither as a writer, nor as a programmer.