I Put a Pillow Over My Head Last Night to Silence the Writing Voices Inside

Sometimes the voices won't go quiet even after the sun has gone down.And then I can't sleep.Last night was one of those.The voices kept whispering. They kept reminding me of all the writing I'm behind on. They insisted on coming up with new topics, on elaborating new sentences, on thinking about tone and pace and voice and style.

If I could only write at a speed which satisfied the voices, maybe they would, for once, go quiet.But I can't.I can't write at the speed of the voices, I can only write at the speed of fingers, so I'm always, always behind. I am never, ever enough.Last night, as the voices kept whispering, I reached a point of total desperation.

I didn't know what to do, so I put a pillow over my head to try to stifle them into silence.The sheer notion of quieting down the internal mess by means of an external object is quite funny, and it's also the expression of how I had been driven nearly mad by the strange inner workings of my own brain.I just needed some peace and quiet so I could sleep.

With the pillow pressed over my head, I hoped that the voices would go away. Instead, they somehow became even wilder. They brought up new perspectives I hadn't thought about, fresh words that sounded too interesting to leave alone, sentences that were ripe like the best oranges in the peak of the season, too sweet to resist, but with just the right amount of sour to pack a good punch.

I shot out of bet, wide awake, pillow on the floor.And then I ended up here

·RELATED QUESTION

Why don't hotel rooms have ceiling lights?

My hotel building is over 100 years old, so we have ceiling lights. We also need a ladder to change a bulb 11' from the floor. It can take 20 minutes for 1 bulb! This is one reason that we have changed to the longer lasting (and more economical) low-energy bulbs.

I would be delighted to have wall lights instead. Retro-fitting them would however be even less economically sound.

Higher than average ceilings mean ladders to change the bulbs in ceiling fittings, and this extends the maintenance time and convenience for staff enormously. Even normal height ceilings mean that a chair is needed to swap a bulb out. Wall fittings are so much more convenient for both staff and customers, reducing the time taken to get light again!

As Michael Forrest Jones says - anything other than a simple bulb swap requires the power to be cut to the whole circuit (which may be more than just a few rooms). This makes it very awkward to do emergency repairs after dark! -- Been there done that... Go with wall fittings that can be isolated in-room!

In short:

I have ceiling lights.

I don't like them, as they are awkward for maintenance.

Replacing them would be expensive and extremely difficult - basically a total rewire of the hotel lighting system.

Design engineers are not stupid. they note the first 2 points!