Since a couple of weeks, I have switched my method of writing posts a bit. A couple of months ago, I usually wrote my posts while bringing the kids to bed. Or more specifically, while lying next to them and waiting for them to fall asleep, which could take up to an hour on most days. The kids’ sleeping behaviour is evolving, and sometimes that means I can, or perhaps should, evolve with them.
Writing in bed is a peculiar way of writing. First of all, I clearly never brought my laptop to bed. Instead, I lay down, with my knees pulled up, and a blanket covering me. Inside the steamy warm environment of my blanket fort I would write my post. (I work on the ecological impacts of artificial light at night, and know it is also not so great for humans – I always assumed this included small humans.) As conditions were never ideal, I tried to churn posts out in less than half an hour, and on most days I was successful. Only rarely did it take more than an hour.
Now…
Typing a post on your phone sucks balls. Typing about 400 of them under the above circumstances was definitely not always fun. My hands – which suffer from chronic repetitive strain injury – never enjoyed phones for writing anything. But everything for the writing, eh? Indeed, the writing part, and the creative spark that comes with it. That was always fun, even despite the tropical blanket fort and painful hands and wrists circumstances.
As I said; my kids are changing. They have suddenly decided that ‘lights out’ means ‘snoring on’. It usually takes less than ten minutes for both to be fast asleep. Often just three. Should I stay in bed and continue to write posts from there, for old times’ sake? Fuck no. These days I get out of bed, turn on my laptop – my wonderful, but seriously underused laptop – and get back to writing on a keyboard. Writing on a keyboard – in my case – is also much less straining on my hands and wrists. It also is a gazillion times faster. And so it is that, with 19:48 on the clock, the kids are in bed, my wife felt sick and decided to join them for a long night’s rest, my post is written, and I have all evening to myself.
A movie? Some stand-up? Reading a book?
Nah. I’ll likely just fall asleep on the couch, but so be it.
Robin Heinen 