Wide awake

I woke up around 3:45 AM this morning due to an asthma attack.  Fortunately/unfortunately, these attacks are infrequent and never really panic-inducing, just lots and lots of coughing and hacking, so while in the throes of an attack I promise myself I'll get myself a prescription for albuterol, but by the time it wears off I shrug and think, "Eh...". 

So it is currently 4:20 AM or so and I'm waiting for the Benadryl to kick in.  Once it does kick in, I'm basically going to lapse into unconsciousness immediately.  This is sort of like playing blog roulette--let's see how much of substance and coherency I can get down before I pass out!

The New Year.  So far, it's going reasonably well.  I've been keeping the apartment tidier (dishes done every night, bed made every morning, laundry folded quickly) and I've been slowly but surely importing organizational stuff for my ancient clutter.  I've been using my stationary bike reasonably regularly, though I was thrilled to discover it's supposed to get up to 50 degrees this week, so I might be able to do some actual running.

My diet has, on the whole, been better.  I slipped up this weekend with a bag of fun-sized Snickers, but on the whole, I'm making progress.  I'm trying to weigh myself less frequently to avoid it becoming more of an obsession.

I still want to start going to the gym to actually get some upper-arm strength.  I discarded the P90X idea because it was just too expensive and required a ton of extra equipment.  When Winter Semester starts in earnest I'll find a weight-lifting class and attend it religiously, so do I promise myself.

I think I'm most proud of the fact that I've been working on my review paper a bit each day reliably.  Ugh.  It's slow-going, but yesterday I got a full page written.  I'd like to start doing the same with my fiction-writing, but I've been resisting.  I think I'm frightened I'll find out I'm not cut out for it.  I was talking to Intaglio the other day about how I struggle to find significance in some of the short stories I read, and he said, "Yeah, your mind is too black-and-white and straightforward.  I think most of the metaphors would go right over your head."  I was pissed, but only because he was right.  I tend to lose a lot of what I read (and I mean what I read of Literature with a capital L, not, like, John Dies At the End, which is freaking awesome and scary and hilarious and everyone should read it), and I'm afraid that because of my straightforwardness I'll never be able to write anything compelling.

WHOA, getting woozy.  Okay.  Sleepy times for IL-X.  Let's hope I can wake up at a reasonable hour!