Daylight Savings Rant, Experiments in Form, Farmer Resentment

It’s that dumb, stupid time of year again when we all have to roll our freakin’ clocks forward for no reason whatsoever, thus throwing us natural night owls into sleep deprivation and chronic irritability for three weeks straight. I’m so annoyed by this asinine, archaic practice. I’m a natural night person who has managed to train myself to wake up at five freakin’ thirty in the a.m. (that’s the morning, people), and be at work and (sort of) functional by 7:30. That is a Herculean, heroic task for me. And now because of Germany and farms or something, I am going to be effectively getting up at 4:30, which just makes me want to cry. I work at a hospital, and it seems that majority of people drawn to the medical field are morning people. I’m always getting meeting invites for 7:00 a.m. Who holds a meeting at 7:00 a.m.? I can’t even think at 7:00 a.m. I’m on the bus in a zombie daze, trying to keep from falling asleep on the shoulder of whoever is next to me. (And while we’re on the subject, what’s with this weird idea that early risers are somehow inherently more productive and moral than night owls? When I stay up late, I’m as productive as a morning person, I’m just performing that productivity at night instead of the a.m.) I literally live for the weekends, knowing I can sleep as late as my body wants to, lounge around in my hoodie and sweatpants, and while away the morning luxuriously sipping coffee and surfing Imgur. I’m dreading this adjustment period. Maybe I should go take a nap as a fortification measure.

On a cheerier note, the new writing group I mentioned a few weeks ago continues to rock! Last week, it was just me and one other person, who, as it turns out, has a penchant for paranormal fiction, which was very heartening to me. I don’t meet many people who share my interest in that sort of thing, and we ended up having a great chat and swapping some good resources. We even got some writing done. I’m working on this long, rambling experimental piece about a horse and an apple and my grandparent’s house, but it’s not working out great so far. It doesn’t seem to want to be poem or a short story or an essay, but this weird hybrid of all three, and also, the subject is very sad-making to me, and uncomfortably memoir-like. I’ve never understood the impulse to write memoirs, and will never write one. First of all, I can’t remember anything, including my wedding date. Secondly, the vast majority of my writing is informed by my personal experience, but most of the details of my life are incredibly banal. I prefer to mine the emotional of charge of my experiences through the construction of elaborate fiction. That somehow makes my experiences seem more real to me that they would be if it wrote a factual account of them. Maybe that’s just how I process experiences best—by symbolizing and mythologizing them.

Since the novel is effectively done except but for some edits needed to fix the ending, I’ve been trying to write poetry again, but everything is coming out wrong. It’s like what I have in my head won’t conform to poetry. It just want to come out the way it wants to come out. It’s roguish and untamable and wants to do its own thing. So I suppose I’ll just let it, although I have no idea how to categorize it. Maybe I’ll create a new genre: “Mopey, Experimental Ramblings” or “Weird Formless Verbal Spewing” or “Strange, Disconcerting and Slightly Senseless Screeds”.

Speaking of screeds, here is Pete Holmes on farmers, a category of people I deeply resent at the moment for stealing an hour of sweet, sweet slumber from me. Thanks, America’s farmers! I know you feed us and all, but seriously, I need my sleep more than I need your organic turnips.

--Kristen McHenry