trouble sleeping

It's been about a week, if not more, that I haven't had a decent sleep as an unemployed. That is to say, I had to wake up multiple times during the course of the night until the break of dawn before I finally actualize my resolute action of getting up well after nine, which is not completely natural based on my habit. There's no point specifying the reason as no perceivable measure could be taken against it just yet. But the lack of sleep is one good trigger for irritability, which in due course generates a series of negative emotions. Then I started wondering about lots of things. I've just finished a book I'd long longed for picking up from where I left out over three years ago: The Way of All Flesh. It's one thing to criticize an author's writing style, but it's quite another to pin remarks on the story itself, especially when it's said to be semi-autobiographical and it's set in a background of such a time and society that is foreign to me. And of course, it contains many paragraphs about the protagonist's struggle about Christianity, or the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or other things that are beyond my knowledge. Then the other day a former colleague, the only one with whom I maintained what could be referred to as friendship from my former company and with whom I used to converse on a variety of those deeper topics that are simply untouchable when chatting with some other people, if you know what I mean, invited me to a play named The Eternal Flame of Van Gogh, which was raved about by another colleague of a more senior position that we both admired, more for the charm of her personality than for her competence at work. When I got there, the play was already starting. I have to admit that it's a little strange to see a Chinese attempting to play the role of Van Gogh, but really, the resemblance in appearance was the last thing to worry about under the circumstance. The acting was quite captivating most of the time. The plot was not the most coherent, but given that there's only 2 hours to unfold the life story of a man of such extraordinary significance, it could be passed as a good play. I remember that protagonist say: as long as I'm doing what I love, even if I can't make a success, I won't become a failure. Two days ago, I took up the bulky book my cousin gave me as a gift and decided to give it a go: The Life and Death in Shanghai. I've already leafed through some pages and reached the beginning of the Proletarian Cultural Revolution, where the Red Guards tore down her house. What is history? I haven't encountered a more well-knit sentence to answer this question than the one by Julien Barnes so I'll quote it again: history is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation. What is history? To those who bore witness to it and those who were lectured about it. And those who lived the history had different accounts of what happened and what not, who was right and who not. Who do you listen to? Those who believe believe in what they believe as firmly as belief can be. How can you accuse them of being untruthful? I remember in this random English course I took the teacher from Canada showed us two documentaries: Fahrenheit 9/11 and Fahrenhype 9/11. He concluded then: write your opinion about truth. I wrote with enthusiasm something with the title Truth is Not What You See. Back to my story of trouble sleeping: sometimes you examine the pros and cons when you're at a deadlock and try to determine if you should go on or give up. But pros and cons written down tell you nothing that you don't yet know.