I'm going to bed.

Last night I was so tired, I started getting ready for bed at 10:00 and was in bed by 11:00.  That is truly amazing for me, because usually I get to bed between 2:00 and 4:00 am.  I went to bed without doing a blog post.

Tonight, I almost didn't do a blog post either.  It's just after midnight, and although for me it's early I'm going to bed early again.

My mother and I have been listening to another J.A. Jance book.  Maybe listening to her, makes us tired, my mother joked.  I don't know.  Maybe.

And maybe it's just that the act of listening, and colouring is more relaxing than watching youtube videos, writing blog posts, or reading websites.  It's strange.  Maybe the article I read a long time ago that said screen time should be limited to bedtime had a point?  I don't know.

I do know, that right now, I have a stomach ache, and I don't feel like sitting up doing anything.

And as strange as it is for me to go to bed so early, I'm going to be heading there very soon.  Going to sleep....  Well that's another matter.  Right now I'm reading a very good book, and if I get sucked into it, like I did 2 days ago, I might end up reading all night long again.  I actually hope not because tomorrow I have to take my mother to the doctor and I want to be able to be awake while I'm driving.

Maybe Entertainment isn't frivolous.

My mother and I are listening to a very good novel by J.A. Jance, about a detective named Beaumont who opens up a cold case for find even more murder than he thought he'd find.

While we are doing that I am colouring, and my mother is playing iPad games.

Just like when I coloured while listening to Raffi, I'm finding this very relaxing.  Maybe, relaxing isn't really the appropriate word for listening to a murder mystery, but in a way it is.

My problems, sadness, and hurts fade away into a fictional world created by J.A. Jance.  It's like watching a good movie or TV show, but it lasts longer.  It lasted for a few hours last night, and almost all day today.  As soon as I got up, Mom asked if I wanted to listen, and I immediately said "yes".  We were so caught up in the storey we wanted to know what happened to the 2 little boys that found the body in a barrel, and to Beaumont, the detective who had knee replacement surgery.

Her descriptions of surgery, anesthetic and Rehab in hospital (the physio kind, not the drug kind), were exactly write.  I could envision the hospital and his pain killer induced dreams perfectly.  My mother spent 3 months in a hospital after having neurosurgery (see my "about me" page for more information).  We got to know the rehab ward intimately, and it is not at all like the rehab wards they show on TV or in the movies.

Having surgery many times myself I know she perfectly described the anesthetic, except for one instance: counting backwards from 10.  Every time I have surgery, I know the anesthesiologist is going to ask me to count backwards from 10, and every time I am determined to get to 1 (or at least past 7), but I never do.  I always count ten, nine, eight, seven, and then that's it.  I'm waking up in the recovery room, wondering why I can't complete such a simple task.  I was a math major in university, you'd think I'd be able to count backwards before surgery.  I can't.  I never can.

I've wanted to be a writer for a long time.  I've written short stories, essays, and descriptions of real live in diary since I was 12, when a teacher introduced me to creative writing.  It was after my grandfather died (the same one I mentioned in yesterday's post), and she suggested it would help me deal with my great grief and hurt.  It was therapeutic.

It was also fun.

The next year in school, when the short storey was introduced in the school curriculum, I was ready.  I drove into it with excitement and enthusiasm.  In university I started writing novels.

It was never intended to be my career.  I thought that entertainment, was frivolous.  I wanted to improve the world, and I chose a degree that helped me do that.  (no it wasn't math, but I needed a major and that was available).

Things didn't quite work out as I expected, but that's a different storey not for this post.

I never gave up writing, but even my own entertainment was frivolous (it came after I did everything important), so how could I think that providing the entertainment of others was important?  I thought feelings were frivolous too.  I felt them, I wanted to understand them, but my happiness, wasn't important.  Other's were important.

But I'm starting to change my mind.  I am important.  My happiness is important.  And so is the happiness of other people.

Happiness can be attained in many ways, and I'm finding some of them.  I enjoy giving to others.  But it's also important to give to myself (and that is not something I understood before).

It's also important to do things that I enjoy doing (also something I didn't understand before).

And if it's important for me to do things I enjoy doing, it's important for others to do things they enjoy doing, and that's where entertainment comes in.  People enjoy entertainment.  A good book like the one Mom and I are listening to know, entertains, removes me from my own sadness and hurt, and takes me into a land somebody else created.

And maybe by writing good novels, and actually trying to publish one of them, maybe I'll be helping people too?  Maybe entertaining people through my writing, is important, because maybe I'll be providing them with an escape, just as J.A. Jance is doing for Mom and I.