creative energy.

For the first time that I can remember, I have insomnia. I can't sleep. I don't just mean tonight, this night that I'm scribbling away at 3am. For the past few weeks, maybe even a month, I find myself hitting the lights and staring up at the black ceiling.

If you know me at all, you understand that this is strange. If you don't know me, let me tell you something about myself: I love to sleep. I wait until the last humanly possible moment to get out of bed in the morning. My roommates are well acquainted with my 10-minute morning dash from bathroomtokitchentofrontdoor. I'm also the person who unabashedly suggests that we go out at 6pm Friday night so that we can have dinner and some drinks and still be in bed by 11pm. I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't do sleep.

I can guess at the causes of this insomnia. One reason might be anxiety, usually in the form of What if I don't have a job? or What if I don't have enough money?

Another reason might be that, at certain points in life, you become very aware of changes as they happen. You can feel the rush of life passing. It isn't sadness or loss, just an acute sensation of yourself living your life. I get that sensation sometimes. Such moments I usually start narrating my own life in my head, which I think a character in one of Wendell Berry's novels also does, though I can't remember which one. She walked down the sidewalk. It had been another long day at work. She stepped on a leaf. You get the idea.

Or, I think closer to the mark, all this sleeplessness might be the result of creative energy unspent. Newly awakened, revived, self-aware, present and ready for some action. I go through my days packing my head full of things I see or hear or read. It feels like the balloon blown up bigger and bigger and any moment you think it might burst but you blow into it one more time anyway. It's all pent up in there, inside my head, and it's clawing around for a way out.

I'm getting the hang of it.

But still, sometimes I lay awake at night and after too much time has passed, I realize that I've been writing things in my head.

I was lying here tonight, awake hours after I meant to be asleep. I took the usual first steps. I rewrote my budget and then scoured craigslist for medical studies at Harvard that I could sign up for to make money. Granted, my budget never changes and I never sign up to be in a study - those are just rituals to remind myself I'm still ok.

Then I did some thinking, thinking about the cats fighting outside, thinking about the woman coughing next door, wondering how long she had been a smoker, wondering if she coughed every night but my window wasn't open so I didn't know it, wondering how much I used to cough overnight, wondering if I'll ever stop wishing I could smoke again, wondering why it's so hot in March that I have to poke my feet out of the blanket so that I don't overheat.

And then I sat up, turned on the light. I thought about writing. I thought, No one wants to read about your insomnia. Shut up and go to sleep. I ignored that voice and started writing. Then I wrote this. And now I'm here and it's very late at night or early in the morning, however you wish to look at it. I know what time my alarm is set for and I know exactly how puffy my eyes will be when it goes off.

But sometimes you need to stay up all night to write.