Ever had one of those rare nights of sleeplessness… after doing everything right?
No blue light after sunset. No strange foods. You even had a nice warm mug of valerian root tea.
It’s all ticked off – the whole, well planned, nocturnal checklist.
(Foreshadowing: mayhaps writing before bed’s a less than genius move to usher in your slumber.)
So… what gives?
This happened to me a couple of nights ago. Naturally, I cursed the rare cup of coffee in which I’d indulged earlier that day. “Must’ve been the mocha,” I thought, as I tossed, turned, pinwheeled, and eventually logrolled off my mattress at 4 A.M. to begin the business of living. With zero rest under my belt. Actually, I don’t wear a belt – but if I did, I’d take it off right now and assault myself with it for not recognizing the obvious. How could it have been the coffee? I’d drunk it at 3 in the effing afternoon. It wouldn’t be till a day or two later – when I read this Quora question somebody else had asked – that I’d realize how I’d sabotaged my own sleep… by being too productive in the P.M.
“Why does my brain keep running laps?”
That was the question. Or something like it.
What someone-smarter-than-I-am piped up to remind the asker was essentially this: we’re kept awake by thought when we keep cycling through the same group of issues sans solutions to said problems. And that makes sense to me. Our brains want resolution. When we don’t attain that, it stresses us out. And stress keeps us awake, seeing as it’s this vestigial survival mechanism. (We can’t well sleep when we know there’s a tiger-dragon-velociraptor – or whatever they had back in cave days – pillaging our rock lair). So, reading this, I immediately thought back to how looped-out my own noggin’s contents were as I spent my sleeplessness skull streamrolling my pillow into a pancake. It was bad. The thoughts were constant. Just like the Quora dude said. And why?
Because I’d felt moved to write an article right before bed. Which I never do.
Now, while that may not sound like a legit explanache, lemme ‘splain. While I can’t vouch for all creative writers, for me, composition is an altered state of consciousness. An amphetamine you freebase by brainstorming. The creative state is something tantamount to traversing some unobservable line from monotony into Narnia. Once you’re in it, your senses are heightened, you’re alertness is raised, and…. the door’s disappeared. And, if you choose to do that right before sleep, then you’re sort’ve screwed. Because the other part of being a creative writer is that – if you don’t have another task following the completion of your concoction, your mind might wanna munch on the content you’ve conjured up. Plus, if you got deep into the magic mode we all aim for, you’re probably still riding a tide of momentum comprising synonyms, metaphors, and miscellaneous alliterative amalgamations. (#metamoment) You’ve been practicing dreaming up what sounds pretty for just long enough that your head’s reluctant to end it now. It’s like a loop, but almost worse, because unlike the negative loop “problem” above, the “solutions” aren’t limited – each time you cycle back around the masterpiece you’ve cephalically sired, you want to decorate it some more – like a tacky Christmas tree strangling in its own tinsel similes. And, since this is a practice you’re not only used to doing but enjoy, your own intrinsic addiction to it keeps some small part of you indulging it. Even if you don’t wake up to actually edit, you head-it, right there on the pillow, seemingly, unwillingly.
Truth is, we don’t want to let it go. We’re like insomnia masochists ‘cause we’re enjoying the brain play too much.
But you could’ve fooled me the other night.
I tried thinking of the most random, dream-like things to induce snoozery. Still, that was probably part of the problem – I was in creative mode already, so all that did was “fire meet gasoline” my plight. However, the actual solution the Quora answer suggested isn’t a far cry from what I was attempting – just a bit less effort, and a bit more “free-association”. You start with one thought only that you create, and from there on, you ride out whatever your mind decides that previous thought reminded it of. The hack goes thusly:
Here is how it works:
1. think about any word;
2. think about any word related to the previous word, but not the word you thought about before;
3. repeat step 2.Example:
Barcelona – Spain – flamenco – dancing – tango – Buenos Aires – steak – pasture – grass – drugs – war – fog – water – cloud – blue – Miles – Black Panthers – boogie – movie – Bogart – Morocco – mint – tea – zzzzzzzzzzA few loose rules
• do not try too hard (do not pause to think);
• avoid using the same word more than once (if you do, choose different association for the next word);
• do not try to make sense — free-associate.
– Quora Dude
Genius. But, admittedly, free association’ll be my toughest challenge.
My cerebral commentary’s ceaseless and senseless. Esp. mid-insomnia.
The reason this makes so much sense to me, though, is that it’s identical to the slalom course my head travels as it sets sail for shut-eye island. I recognize it. It’s that “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” game your brain plays as you drift off. All those nights where I jolt awake just before I fall into the unconsciousness abyss (wondering why I was dreaming of slow dancing with ducks that have people eyes and unwelcome life advice to issue me), I reflect on how I got there. And, nearly always, it’s because of some thought I had right before letting go of my wakeful reigns – one that was ten to twenty stepping stone ideas away from said strange avian tango.
So, there we go. I’d say I’ve learned my lesson and that I won’t be doing my scribble sorcery in the evenings anymore, but we all know how addicts are. What I will say is this, though: homeboy from Quora rocks for gifting me this insight on how to hack my own think-meat. ’cause I’m definitely trying this out next night sleep’s being a tease.
And if I don’t wrap this up soon, that may very well be tonight.
Sweet dreams, you creative masochists.