I do a lot of thinking. Sometimes it's about some really deep shit. Sometimes it's not. I spent 20 minutes the other day trying to figure out if I could make pancakes out of normal cake batter (I was going to call them cake-cakes, and the answer is yes, you can). Like most people, the majority of my thinking has always been done at night.
This has come with mixed results.
I've worked out a lot of my writing when I'm laying in bed trying to sleep. That is when my poems really take form, or I suddenly know where to take a piece of fiction I've been struggling with. I mean, it makes sense, when you think about it. Rather than overthinking (as I'm incredibly inclined to do), just laying there and letting thoughts form and flow as they will allows you to find connections you were too busy to realize.
For every brilliant (I have a low bar) thought I've had at night, though, there have been a few far-less-than-pleasant ones I've had to contend with.
Night is when my depression kicks in. Night is when my anxiety spikes. The sensory deprivation that comes from just laying in the dark means that all my fucked-up thought patterns go largely unfought. Usually when it got bad I would take it as my cue to take a Tylenol PM, or count backwards from 300 (which seems to work for me), or throw a meditation tape on YouTube on my phone. Either way, it was time to force sleep.
Then I started working night shift at a hospital.
For the most part I really like it. I've always been awful at waking up to an alarm. It's easier for me to keep myself awake than it is to wake myself up. I can keep a headphone in one ear and listen to music all night. When it isn't busy I can read.
But I do my best and my worst thinking when it isn't busy. My body is so used to processing everything at night that I still do it. Sitting at my desk at 4am on a slow night with nothing to do is really the same as laying in bed, mentally.
Except that I can't force myself to sleep when I need to.
3am seems to be when the world goes to bed. Social media crawls to a halt.Texts start going unanswered. I realize in these moments that I am completely alone. Well, except for my thoughts.
The takeaway from this is that it is probably finally time to learn how to cope with the thoughts themselves instead of ignoring them in favor of unconsciousness.
At least I've got the time.
This has come with mixed results.
I've worked out a lot of my writing when I'm laying in bed trying to sleep. That is when my poems really take form, or I suddenly know where to take a piece of fiction I've been struggling with. I mean, it makes sense, when you think about it. Rather than overthinking (as I'm incredibly inclined to do), just laying there and letting thoughts form and flow as they will allows you to find connections you were too busy to realize.
For every brilliant (I have a low bar) thought I've had at night, though, there have been a few far-less-than-pleasant ones I've had to contend with.
Night is when my depression kicks in. Night is when my anxiety spikes. The sensory deprivation that comes from just laying in the dark means that all my fucked-up thought patterns go largely unfought. Usually when it got bad I would take it as my cue to take a Tylenol PM, or count backwards from 300 (which seems to work for me), or throw a meditation tape on YouTube on my phone. Either way, it was time to force sleep.
Then I started working night shift at a hospital.
For the most part I really like it. I've always been awful at waking up to an alarm. It's easier for me to keep myself awake than it is to wake myself up. I can keep a headphone in one ear and listen to music all night. When it isn't busy I can read.
But I do my best and my worst thinking when it isn't busy. My body is so used to processing everything at night that I still do it. Sitting at my desk at 4am on a slow night with nothing to do is really the same as laying in bed, mentally.
Except that I can't force myself to sleep when I need to.
3am seems to be when the world goes to bed. Social media crawls to a halt.Texts start going unanswered. I realize in these moments that I am completely alone. Well, except for my thoughts.
The takeaway from this is that it is probably finally time to learn how to cope with the thoughts themselves instead of ignoring them in favor of unconsciousness.
At least I've got the time.
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