Between My Sheets—Episode 10: The Climax
When the climax doesn't look like what you expected.
What if (re)building a writing life could be its own story . . . bound and printed?
New here? You may want to start at the beginning . . .
Because it turns out I’m writing a book disguised as a literary business model, disguised as a memoir unfolding in real time.
Between My Sheets is a living memoir about (re)building a word-centered life—
with a Frenchman, a growing goat flock, a newborn lamb with zoomies, and a front door being built with intention, not urgency.
Can I just say I’m glad you’re here?
Well, I am.
Now sink into this Friday moment—roughly a 9-minute read.
Welcome, you.
I feel like Alice in Wonderland while being Mary who had a little lamb.
The hole I keep falling down is actually a good one—because it’s showing me gold.
But it’s also debilitating.
Because I’m not yet finishing the ONE THING that matters.
The front door.
Yet.
Woolley Nightowl Lamb Chop—yes, she has a full name now, and yes, she earned every syllable of it—had a rough weekend.
Upset belly. Separation anxiety. Wouldn’t settle unless I was within arm’s reach.
(The “Nightowl” is official: she comes alive at dusk which means I come alive at dusk whether I planned to or not.)
But she turned a corner midweek.
Growing. Doing zoomies up and down the driveway.
Who knew lambs zoomed!
Racing through my house.
Jumping up on my sofa.
Oh hell no.
I've been sleeping on that sofa because little Woolley can't have me out of sight for five minutes.
She sleeps under my chair while I write and work to get this front door hung by hinges that will actually one day open—soon.
Damn it.
In fact, my reward when those hinges finally swing wide is a decadent slide into a bubble bath—the bath that is now awaiting me, ready, on my front-back porch.
But the neighbors, they haven’t left yet.
Sigh.
So that sinking into delicious waters is on hold—yet now tied to a double outcome. My front door and the departure of neighbors I’ve still yet to meet.
Double sigh.
Which one of us is anti-social?
Honestly, I think I’m just busy . . . and literally attached at the hip to a little lamb.
The Frenchman is constantly making the lamb’s milk without a single complaint and with the utmost care—two, sometimes three times a day.
While also caring for all the goats.
Bless him.
But this milk making—it’s no joke.
A messy process of powdered milk and careful stirring in of filtered water or the dust of it flies everywhere. Coating everything in a sticky film that a variety of tropical ants here are loving.
Honestly, he’s a gem.
My job is being a lamb maah and making the baby bottles 5-7 times a day, plus several feedings during the night.
Broken sleep is my new norm . . . but then again, hasn’t it always been? Then I read something that stopped me mid-bottle.
No, not wine bottle.
The article stated emphatically that our eight-hour sleep being “the norm” is nothing but a fabrication . . .
In fact, it’s a systematic cultural reshaping of society and not at all how humans naturally slept before factories needed workers and schools needed children—at set hours.
Before the invention of artificial light disturbed natural rhythms and allowed efficiency and productivity to be of utmost importance.
Two things I have systematically shied away from.
Interesting.
This read—I’m forever reading—documented how historians have found over two thousand references across twelve languages, going back to ancient Greece, describing the same pattern: four hours, then up for two, then four more of deep sleep.
By the late 1800s compulsory school attendance locked children—and therefore whole families—into a single consolidated sleep schedule.
And spending hours awake in the middle of the night went from being completely normal to being called slothful.
Gasp.
And, even worse, those who naturally woke up in the night were dubbed insomniacs. And medicated.
Yet for many, our most creative endeavors happened in that two-hour span between sleeps.
Maybe that’s why I tend to write at 3:33 am.
Maybe that’s why I have a gold mine of words in my digital drawers . . .
Maybe my body, my soul knows what’s best—
and refuses to listen to man.
Which is exactly why the front door is still closed.
It’s not open.
And honestly? I know why.
I don’t want to open it when I know it might break—when the next steps aren’t in place because I know my pattern is to fade.
Or take on another’s book project and become so lost in their story I forget my own.
Hard. Pill. To. Swallow.
I’m not forcing. And I’m not whipping myself with a self-punishment stick.
I’m allowing myself grace. And giving myself a deadline.
But at the same time, I need to whip myself in the arse—not out of shame or wrongness, but from a place of love and acceptance. A self-awareness that knows I'm very capable of playing, dabbling, perfecting, creating—and not sharing.
So the time has come, even with a little lamb all needy and clingy at my side, to get a move on.
Before I forget what I’m doing.
Because at times, what should be easy, is not.
And it’s because of me. I own it.
Writing this series each week is both a reflection on who I have been, am—and a looking glass into the crystal ball of who I want to be.
Who I already am—just on the other side of that front door.
So I’m asking myself something out loud, with you as my witness, Lovely Reader.
Am I stalling?
Or do I finally know myself so very well that I refuse to do this word-business like I have so many times attempted in the past?
Wing it.
Or am I making it more difficult than it needs to be?
If there was an “all of the above” bubble, I’d hurriedly pencil shade it in.
Do people still take paper tests with a pencil?
Here’s what happened this week.
I am a digital mess. Unorganised. A disaster.
So I did something obscene.
I asked AI to comb through my digital files and tell me what he/she/it found.
What came back stopped me cold.
Enough content to repurpose for nearly four years. Probably more. That was a search of one shared drive. I have seven.
Head meets desk—hard.
Content that could be formed into small, snackable books.
Content for a weekly newsletter that could run in the background.
Remember that humming machine I talked about in earlier episodes?
So much possibility.
And it was hysterical and disconcerting to have AI point out what I already knew.
I write daily like I’m on fire for two, maybe three months—then systematically fade.
Hence my need for systems.
For me, being live and present all-the-damn-time simply isn't realistic. It goes against my very energetic frame.
Because just as I’m not an eight hour straight sleeping girl, I’m also not an always “on” one either.
Oh and on a funny side note, AI went nuts about my goats.
It (there, pronoun settled) found a folder full of goat photos, a few videos, and then some goat tales—then promptly went bonkers.
Even going so far as to tell me this is viral shit sitting here and needs to be enJOYed by people.
Yes, it capitalized JOY my way!
Bloody hell.
I told you it was obscene.
Big Brother, it turns out, is very interested in my goats.
But the idea that people would love to see my damn goats and this little lamb racing up and down my driveway at crazy speeds for such a little soul—it stuck.
It’s always been there—on a loop in the back of my mind.
Just lacking a distribution system.
Because just look at that face.
And this one . . . my life with goats.
And if I ever shared the video of Moo Baah losing his teenage shit—it would go viral for sure.
I’m sharing it. Consider yourself warned.
But let’s stick to the words for now.
302 individual pieces.
And on a second search more than 400.
But of only one drive of seven.
Yes, I’m snickering over here.
Because Poor AI thought it solved my issues by mapping out:
Six thematic volumes, fifty-two emails, book chapters that never made it between a spine, course content, farmette stories, and enough material for a weekly newsletter running quietly in the background for three, possibly four years.
Words written when I was hiding.
Words written when I was brave.
Words typed at 3:33am when something cracked open and had to come out before first light faded.
And not even all my words.
I’m not a digital mess.
I’m a digital word-vault.
A literal money-printing-press when I get out of my own way and share . . .
Remember, Episode 6—one piece of that vault—a 16-minute audio recorded on my laptop, in this house, in a few hours—has already made more than $27,000 in just a few years time.
On autopilot. When offered. Which wasn’t often.
And somehow I was walking around calling my content a digital disaster.
So here’s my declaration.
I refuse to wing it.
That’s new.
That’s Season One in three words.
That’s what I’ve been hedging, fighting, not honoring fully—until now.
100% possible 100% of the time.
The front door will open.
The bath will happen.
The words will reach 33 then 333 then 3,333 then 33,000 souls.
I believe this the way I believe Woolley Nightowl Lamb Chop will try to jump on my sofa again today.
With complete and utter certainty.
Maybe you have your own all-of-the-above bubble to pencil in, Lovely Reader.
Maybe you’ve been calling your creativity a disaster too.
Maybe you’re the one who finally knows yourself well enough to refuse to do it the old way—and that refusal looks, from the outside, exactly like stalling.
I’m here to say maybe it isn’t.
Instead, it’s finally making the bed before you get in it—for a four or eight hour sleep.
Am I comfy-cozy warm?
Season One of Between My Sheets ends here.
No need to freak.
I didn’t say Between My Sheets ends.
Just season one.
Stick with me.
Ten episodes.
One Frenchman arrival.
One newborn lamb.
One content vault cracked open.
One outdoor bath almost enJOYed.
One front door mid-construction.
One word-business being built like a solid, inviting bed—one layer at a time.
So I’m creating a booklet (soon) for Season One—and calling it
The Unruffling.
That’s a bed being made. One sheet at a time.
A compilation of the prelude and episodes 1 through 10 with a little extra something-something written from me—for readers who want to hold the whole season in their hands.
As if I need to write more words when I already have so many.
Actually, yes, I do.
I forever will.
At 3:33am.
But now, now they have purpose and a path into the light.
And soon into your hands—should you wish to have them all proper-bound.
(Details soon.)
But don’t fret, Lovely Reader. I’m not Shonda Rhimes (love her) and this is not Bridgerton . . . but oh, how I love that show!
There will be no—waiting for Season Two to begin—beyond our normal weekly rhythm.
So until Episode 11 . . .
I’m off to spend as much time with the Frenchman as I can. Chaperoned, of course, by Woolley.
And when he leaves, one week from tomorrow, I’m not sure what will happen.
My hands will be full . . . and I’ll admit my heart—a bit empty.
Not just because this visit he’s carried so much of the daily weight—while quietly supporting me as I continued working on a “front door” project that he can’t comprehend—simply because it matters to me.
Can you love someone more fifteen years later even when separated by thousands of miles most of the time?
My answer—I’ll let you take a wild guess.
Just Jill 💜 Stevens
P.S. Woolley would like you to know she has no regrets about the sofa incident nor being a Nightowl.
P.P.S. The front door will open.
P.P.P.S. Moo Baah turns eight on May 1st. This was back closer to his terrible twos.
A Sneak Peek
The Balance Sheet
Because the numbers tell a story too.
Before I wrap, I want to share something extraordinary.
Two people—currently inside, going through several of my products — reached out and asked if they could invite friends in.
Make it an experience. Together.
Without me asking.
I said heck, yeah.
Emailed them both a link to a sales page that’s already done — the one they saw and ordered from. Opened a private checkout door.
Those two people brought in 15 new-to-me people. Overnight.
What?!
So I sent one email to all 83 people who’d come through that side door.
“Hey, you’re inside . . . some of you asked to bring along friends and make an experience of it. If that’s something you’d like to do too — share this link over the next few days with anyone who might say yes.”
Are you ready for the result?
44 total new-to-me people.
$5,940—extra, unexpected, un-asked-for.
And JOYfully received.
The front door isn’t open yet.
The house is already full.
The Balance Sheet—the paid extension of Between My Sheets—opens soon.
Inside: the full numbers, the real systems, the deeper behind-the-scenes of building this word-business in real time. First access goes to readers who are already here.
Watch this space.
Side note: The sleep research is real—and more fascinating than the viral version. Roger Ekirch spent sixteen years and found over two thousand historical references, going back to ancient Greece, documenting the natural two-sleep pattern.
This is worth your time.
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Just so you know: This is my slice of the web where hot flashes meet cold wine, neck waddles are real, and birthdays feel more like breakdowns. Step into my word-world as I (re)build my writing life in real time.