Thursday, 29 November 2001

I figured out how to fix one rough bit in my story, so I polished that up this morning before work. Not much forward progress, though.

This evening, Jackie and I watched "Swordfish," a movie from this summer. I would have gone to see it in the theater, but it started while I was at Clarion and was gone from the theaters by the time Clarion was over.

Jackie hated it. I rather liked it. I always like a good heist story.

At work the call has gone out for films for the second annual UDC Film Festival. (We had one last year, which was a great success.) I posted a note for all the people who wanted to make a film, but who really wanted to make a foreign film. I offered to translate a script into Esperanto, or to write a script in Esperanto based on the film maker's concept. I don't know if I'll get any takers, but I think it would be fun.

While I was in college, I went short of sleep too often. Then, the first couple of years after college, I had a very dull life and got plenty of sleep. I discovered that I was much happier and healthier (if a bit bored) that way.

The improvement was so dramatic, I became completely convinced of my own need for sleep. I was also inclined to project my own experience onto other people, although I did so quietly. If they wanted to imagine that they could get along fine for weeks or months without enough sleep, I wasn't going to argue with them. But I did think they were idiots.

After my experience at Clarion, I'm inclined to ease up just a bit on the idiots who think they can short-change themselves on sleep indefinitely. I still think they're idiots, though.

I'm not completely sure what the difference was at Clarion vs. my college experience. Maybe it was that I never ended up going five days without enough sleep and then trying to make it up on the weekend. If I got too little sleep for one or two nights in a row, then I'd get enough sleep the next night. I also always slept until I woke up, which works a lot better for me than using an alarm clock.

But, whereas my experience at college left me quite unwilling to go short of sleep to get something done, I'm inclined to be a bit more flexible now. But not much. Besides my own experience, there's a lot of data that even moderate amounts of sleep deprivation result in health problems and learning problems.

Good night.