Random Thoughts

Posted By Warren on July 18, 2010

I’m sitting here at 4:30 in the morning.

I am drinking a coke and eating some shell macaroni mixed with pesto sauce. I think the macaroni is good cold. I am thinking of adding a little bit of tuna to the rest…tomorrow. I say tomorrow but I mean “After I wake up.” It is almost 5 am and I am awake. This is as normal, to me, as having a vast amount is money is normal to Bill Gates. Not everyone has that money, but when you have it you don’t really think about it.

Although sometimes I do think about it. (My sleeping schedule, that is, not having vast amounts of money. Mainly because I don’t have it ) I wonder if I’m some strange person set on this earth to act opposite of everyone else. I say good-night when people say good morning. I listen to the sounds of the night, wide awake, as other people are snoring in their beds. I great dawn as others great dusk. I don’t always sleep well at night, but during the day I seem to be able to just nod off.

I find it harder to go to bed at 10 then it is to stay up all night. It’s so weird. I’ve been like this my whole life; even as a child I didn’t sleep until 10 or 11. I didn’t think that was odd until my classmates would tell me their bedtimes: 7:30, 8. 9 at the latest… In high school I learned to sleep on the bus (when I road one.) We had an hour and a half or so ride and I felt like it was a good time to catch some zzz’s.

I read somewhere that some people are just wired differently. The type of people that would guard the camp at night in ancient history. Or the city guards that patrolled the walls at night in plague infested middle aged Europe. The creative types that often fueled industry and wrote books and songs and such in the Victorian era…

Did they have family that worried about it? Girlfriends/Spouses that told them to take some medicine just so they could sleep… Maybe a herb or a new tonic. And if they gave in and tried the world turned in to something that felt…

Unnatural.

When I try to force myself to conform to a regular schedule I feel weird. I feel like I’m going against the grain of my very existence. It is like trying to force myself to stop breathing. I can do it for awhile, mind you, but when I am left to my own devices I always go back to this schedule.

It is like slipping on an old pair of jeans. They just fit, ya know?

It’s not that I sleep all day; I feel the best when I’m asleep between 4 and 6 and awake between 12 and 2. I like being up when the sun is out. Yet, here I am at almost 5 am and not asleep.

I guess it doesn’t help I’ve worked mainly graveyard and evenings my whole career. I just don’t like working in the morning.

I guess that is why I think “Author” is the best job for me. Very few professions can be done in the still of the night. Words seem to come to me more naturally when I’m awake at night and feeling good. Concepts often hit me at night that don’t during the day. Many people have received late night emails from me stating something that was both cool and neat…or so I hope. I have one friend that is well aware of my nightly wanderings, for she often suffers from insomnia and sees me up at all hours of the night. Probably one reason we are still friends after so many years…

I don’t think it is insomnia in my case. I’m just nocturnal.

I guess it’s time for me to stop fighting it. To embrace my nocturnal nature and just run with it. Get things done at night, when I’m awake, instead of laying in bed fighting to sleep. It’s all I can do; I feel the most normal when I learn to stop fighting and love my nocturnal nature

Categories: Random Thought
Tags: nocturnal, sleep