The artistic insomniac

   There are days, like today, where I partially wish I were of simple mind and not at all creative. These days are rare, and happily so. These days are the ones were I'm so tired that it becomes almost unbearable. I'm sure everyone's experienced at least one day like that by my age, but I am not meaning to keep myself awake. My mom would probably tell you that I do this to myself, because it's summer and that I never put my phone down, not even to sleep, and that I'm always on my laptop. As much as I'd like for that simple reason to be the truth it's simply not. I haven't had more than 7 hours of sleep in the past 2 months. My body's actually used to me usually running on 6 hours all the time, but here lately I've been getting any where from 6-1/2 hours of sleep in a night. I know exactly what's keeping me up too. It's my brain. I can't make it shut up.

   Now I know there's a medical solution to that, but I'm truly not interested in a dependency on sleeping meds (even herbal based ones) to be able to sleep. When I move out and do the dirt poor college kid thing I don't want to have to worry about having to buy a bottle of rest every 30-60 days. ADHD meds are going to be expensive enough. I've tried soothing music, and that just caused me to think even more.

   My brain seems to believe that the best time to have deep philosophical thoughts, and amazing creative ideas is as I'm right at the edge of consciousness and sleeping. Then I am awake writing it down, or drawing a rough sketch. When my mind isn't creating it's over analyzing. I worry about things that are silly. For example when I tried to sleep last night I began thinking about upcoming events, and before I knew it I was up, and placing every date I needed to remember on my iPhone calendar.
 
   I wish that my brain would realize that night is for thinking, and that when I sit at a desk with my journal and my sketchbook is when the creative thinking is to be done. I know it doesn't work that way, and it never will. It would be nice though.

   Since I'm already wide awake, which did cause me to cry a tad and think to myself in a mental whimper, "I just want to be able to sleep..", I guess I will think some more. I wonder how many great minds have actually ever managed the sleep well. I can't answer that of course, but I do have a few that I think are least likely.

Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Wolfe, Edgar Allen Poe, and Carl Sagan.

   I'm plenty sure that their aren't many true intellectuals that haven't suffered insomnia at some point in their lives. I don't mean to imply that I am nearly as visionary as any of the aforementioned minds. I am not nearly so pompous. Actually I should probably think I'm closer to their greatness than I do. That's what happens when I think so much, and yet I think so little of myself.

   I know this post, like the others before it, will seem babbley (yeah I just made that word up), but it wouldn't be truly me if it weren't "babbley", all over the place, and hard to follow. This post may even read less smoothly than the others. Well except for the pencil-sharpener post, (I'm so sorry web of the world far, and wide for using even a single bit of data to publish that gem), incidentally; that post was written on a day when I was more exhausted than I currently am.

Here's what caused me to sleep poorly two nights ago:

   I am still running full speed locomotive in my head, but I think anything else I'd have to say would be completely unrelated to my inability to sleep.