Throughout my life I have experienced bouts of insomnia. It used to be much much worse and I used to not handle it very well.
Nowadays, I definitely have better coping mechanisms for when it hits, such as: meditating, writing with pen & paper, listening to quiet music, relaxing my muscles one-by-one etc. etc. But! That lack of sleep, that feeling I'll wake up with - where it's like I've consumed multiple pots of coffee - I'm not gonna lie, when it goes on for many nights in a row, I feel like life gets more difficult.
Sometimes being awake at 4am will throw me sideways, like when the body is disjointed, I feel 'out of alignment,' not just with myself but with the rest of the world.
The last few nights that this has happened, I've started to use this experience in a productive way. Being thrown out of a routine, whether on purpose or not, helps rejig my mind to think of things from new and interesting perspectives and this, in turn, can lead to moments of inspiration in storytelling.
I think this might be why writers of the past were stereotyped as alcoholics. Seems to me they were simply using alcohol as a way in to this different mind-set. Of course, it is my preference not to rely on substances / sleeplessness in order to achieve mind changing experiences but when opportunity knocks in the form of being bright-eyed & bushy-tailed at 2am, I'm not going to kick it out of bed. I'm gonna get up and write write write.
Over the years I hope to proactively evolve all seemingly negative experiences into these moments of possibility.
And sleep.
"To sleep, perchance to dream." Good ole Shakespeare :)
And, in case you're wondering, I wrote this post at 5am after being awake for a long time on one such a night.
- M
*M, Here is a song that helps me when nights are long and lonely, xo - J
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