The Upside of My Insomnia!

6/19/2012

The Upside of My Insomnia!

Insomnia is defined as a chronic inability to sleep.  I'm glad that the dictionary has defined it so nicely so that I more fully understand what the heck my problem is when I'm up and the rest of the world is asleep.  As a mild Insomniac I try and be mindful not to wake up the rest of the house, because not everyone (or every dog) appreciates my new routine.

First, I must have coffee - I'm up and I know I'm staying up.  I go hard core and reach for the real stuff - decaf is not the answer in the middle of the night.  Okay now that my coffee cup is filled, I begin to make good use of my extra time. 

I'm not going to bore you with the details of lost sleep because I'm pretty sure that all of you have one time or another been up at some unreasonable hour and tried desperately to get back to sleep.

Okay well forget all that stuff about going back to sleep.  Let me talk to you about the upside of being an insomniac.  Trust me, there are some positives attached to these early morning hours.

One of the best things about the middle of the night is the quietness.  I can step out on the porch and hear nothing.  And since the rest of my house is asleep, it's really quiet inside too.

After warming up coffee (this is a necessity) I head to my chair to catch up on the last few hours of activities by the rest of the world.  I read my new emails and press the delete button over and over again keeping only the real "mail" which seems to be less every day.   Once the coffee begins to take hold, I am able to create my responses to my "Words with Friends" games in record time.  There are no distractions and truthfully it doesn't take much time to add the odd "s" or "ed" here and there and move on to the next  challenge.  The friends and family who play this game with me know that I'm no contender for ever winning.  I don't think about my strategy (I have none), I'm just so excited when I can recall a word, any word.  My new favorite words are "ta", "da" and "QI".  So if one of you readers want to feel really good about your word creating abilities, then I'm the person you want on the other side of the board (so to speak).

My puzzles complete, I head back to the kitchen to reheat and/or add more coffee to my cup.  And no I don't return to my "chair".  Nope now it's time for the computer to tackle today's blog.  I have many subjects running in my head but that doesn't mean a thing if you can't get it down on paper.

Also during my extra hours of night I can and do: read books, knit more holey and odd-shaped strips of yarn (somewhat resembles a scarf big enough for an elephant to use), clean out my catalog and magazine basket (and secretly wish I could clean out Jeff's magazine basket!) and read the paper - all before Jeff wakes up. 

Since there are only 24 hours in a day the only way you can get more "day" is to have less night.  Each and every day that I'm up long before I should be, I just gave myself a gift - the gift of extra time.

Here's to all you night owls - enjoy your day!

P