Commonplace Book / What Keeps Me Awake?
Part of what inspired me to come back and start blogging again was a class I took at GSU last semester called Expository Writing. I didn’t really know what to expect from this class when I signed up for it, or really even what expository writing was. After switching concentrations from Creative Writing to Advanced Comp, I just knew I needed some random English classes so I could finish this damn degree once and for all. Turns out I was taking a class on one of the things I do best, even though I never knew it was a thing.
The main assignment in this class was a Commonplace Book. I have been writing in books for about as long as I can remember, but I have never written one that I would be graded on, or even that someone else was allowed to read. Sure, I have had to turn in plenty of sketch books over the years, but I was always careful to only fill those with drawings.
In short, I filled up the entire book well before the semester was over, wrote a bunch of kick ass essays (which I will eventually post here), and managed to pull the first overall A+ of my entire college career. Before this, I had always thought of what I write in my books as things other people would not want to read. While that is probably true in some cases, I was surprised when it was not. If my professor could handle reading this, why couldn’t someone else?
Several future entries will be taken from the Commonplace Book I wrote last semester. Even after the first and second editing passes they will each get from being transferred out of hand writing and into digital type, I know these all need a lot of work. I will be starting an internship with the southeastern branch of the MLA in the fall, and my plan is to keep revising these as I learn new things. If you have any revision notes or suggestions, I am very open to these. Please contact me privately with feedback at pixivixen11@gmail.com
The first entry I will post is actually the last one I completed, but it was in response to a prompt I found in the Writer’s Block section of Livejournal. The question:
What Keeps You Awake At Night?
I have had trouble falling asleep for about as long as I can remember. I have also been known for sleepwalking and other weird nocturnal behavior. I remember one night as a very small child standing in the middle of the dark kitchen trying to figure out how to whistle. Once I figured it out I ran into my parents’ room to wake them up and share my new found skill. In the winter I would wake up under the kitchen table curled up in front of the heating vent. Some nights in the summertime I would be sent to bed while it was still light outside even though I did not have to wake up for school the next morning. On these nights, my parents often had friends over for cocktails and card games and who knows what else. I would sit in the dark on the floor of my bedroom next to the air duct, which could be used as a portal into the dining room. I could see everybody’s shoes under the dinner table through the slots, and I could usually hear what they were talking about pretty clearly.
I remember hearing things in some of those drunken conversations which made me extremely angry. I have no recollection of what was said but I remember that anger like it still lives inside me somewhere. I wanted so badly to run into the next room and scream at the top of my lungs, but I dared not. Instead, I picked up a pen and a notebook and I started to write. One time I got bored with their chatter and switched on the radio. It was then I discovered the Dr. Demento show, which changed my life forever. Mostly I would just sit in silence listening to their laughter and wondering about what kinds of amazing experiences I must be missing out on all over the world while I was trapped there in my bedroom. I usually ended up staying awake even later than they did on these nights. Quite often, the injustice of childhood would sustain me until dawn.
I guess everyone thought I would grow out of it eventually, but I never did. The word Insomnia started getting thrown around by the time I was a teenager. I alternated cherry coke and over the counter sleep aids in high school in a futile attempt at maintaining a somewhat normal balance of sleep and activity. This experiment eventually landed me in the hospital and was abandoned afterward in favor of Ritalin, which also caused more problems than it solved.
I would lay awake in the dark for hours every night, and this was inevitably the time when I would get my best ideas of the day. One thing would lead to another and there I would be, groping around in the dark for my notebook or sketching materials at 4am. After a certain point I couldn’t help wondering how much of my life I had wasted on trying to force sleep upon my unwilling mind. It occurred to me that these were perfectly good hours I would never get back, which led me to wondering why I ever feel the need to sleep at a specific time and for a specific duration in the first place. The only answer I could come up with was the influence of so many people outside my head who have always urged me to sleep like they do even though it doesn’t come naturally. This line of thought was the beginning of a big mental shift for me towards the end of adolescence which eventually led to my abandoning Christianity…but that is a story for another day.
Once I stopped looking at my inability to sleep as a disorder and accepted myself as a nocturnal creature, life has been much happier. I have learned to manage functionally on very little sleep, and I find myself getting a lot more done. I am not going to say I have nothing more to learn about time management, but I certainly do get by. Perhaps there will be a day when everything starts to add up and I just can’t do it anymore. For now, I like to think blocking out the advice and influence of others for awhile allowed me to come up with a personal balance that works for me. To this day, if I don’t feel sleepy upon being coaxed into bed, I will sit here all night and fidget with various projects until I do, regardless of what might be expected of me in the morning. Some nights I never get tired and I just stay awake all the way through until the cat corners me on the couch late in the afternoon and then it is all over. Either way, I get my shit done, so why does it matter if or when I sleep?
I have been asked for years by all kinds of people why I don’t sleep at night, and I have given all sorts of random excuses. If my daily life is filled with too much routine and each day starts to look too much like the one before, I tend to stay awake late just to mix things up. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I write. Sometimes I paint. Sometimes I watch Film Noir. Sometimes I play video games. Whatever I choose, I always seem to get so much more done when everyone else is asleep. It seems to be the time when my thoughts are the clearest and I can really hear myself think.
The wee hours of the morning are also the best times to meditate. There have always been a lot of huge questions floating around in my head, and every time I think I have the answer to one, another pops up in its place. Such is life and learning. I currently think a lot about why we are here, why I am here, and just what the hell is really going on in this crazy universe. I think about how common it has become for people to lie to each other, and how much this dishonesty complicates our lives. I feel the pain of people in far-away places who have it so much worse than me. I think about what I am doing wrong and what could be done differently. My personal truth morphs and changes every day largely because of the thinking I do while those around me sleep.
There is a beautiful young man sleeping in my bed right now, and sometimes I envy him. He tells me he used to be worse than me with the nocturnal restlessness, but one of the first times I came over to his house to play video games, he fell asleep on my chest in the middle of a match. To this day, it is rare for his head to touch my breast without sleep following almost immediately. I don’t understand how someone as antsy as me could possibly bring so much comfort to anyone else, but I am glad that I can. Maybe some people sleep more easily knowing that someone somewhere is awake toiling through the night on something. By the same token, maybe part of the reason I don’t sleep is because other people do. Whatever the case, I am nocturnal. I have accepted this. It is part of how I define myself. You wouldn’t ask an owl why he doesn’t sleep at night, so don’t ask me.