The Funny Comes Out Late at Night

My name is Alianne and I have a confession to make. I am not a morning person. And it’s not because I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning (although, depending on the hour, that is definitely a factor) but because all my best and/or most hilarious ideas come to me late at night.

I’m the kind of person who requires brain activity. If, for some reason, I am denied (if I am doing something incredibly boring, or getting distracted every time my brain tries to … you know… work) strange things happen. Like me searching for different color highlighters to fill in the Windows logo on my keyboard. Sadly, they were not permanent markers and the first time I hit that key the colors chafed off. My masterpiece ruined!

Late at night is when most distractions of the day are over and done with and I get to let my brain off the leash. It has spawned some… interesting things. I have documents with pages numbering in the two digits of just conversations between random voices in my head. Most of them characters that at one point or another end up in a story. I have others of one- to two-paragraph scenarios that would make fantastic books or movies… if only someone else wrote them out. I save those for a rainy day, like a sort of daydream journal.

In those dark, quiet hours, inspiration sparks like lightning in an electrical storm. Sometimes I get lucky and manage to capture some of that madness for future use. Other times all I can do is just sit back and watch the fireworks. (By the way, these are all metaphors, in case that wasn’t clear ;D ) I love those times and even though my eyes will be closing on their own and my head will be getting heavy, I will sit there and enjoy those moments because I know that once the sun rises, the traffic of everyday life will wash it all away again.

This space is free!

And then I’ll be standing in a parking lot, looking at something that makes absolutely perfect sense to me and no one else, but I won’t mind because I’ll know no one else would probably bother looking in the first place.

Right. But back to the point. All this prolonged nocturnal hyperactivity of cross-firing between the left and right cranial hemisphere really cut in to my sleep time. Which, in turn, hampers my ability to get out of bed in the morning on the milder side of the emotional spectrum.

Translation: Late night daydreams = very cranky morning Aly. I growl. Or snarl, depending on who dared to wake me up. It’s usually my alarm clock–which is on my wrist watch because it beeps quieter and stops after 60 seconds without getting obnoxiously loud and requiring me to break something–which I am loath to break because they don’t make this particular model anymore. I’ve had it for over 12 years and as long as the damn thing tells time, I am keeping it. So there.

But, given half a chance, I would ignore the alarm, burrow back under those covers and hibernate for a nice long time. I hear sleep patterns change as we grow older. Night owls become more morning people, we need less sleep, and we need it broken up and interspersed during the day. I think it’s just the stress of work. But that’s just me.

Anyway, I just had a bullet point list turn into a two-page psychological thriller and it’s half an hour past my bed time, and already a two hour sleep deficit this week. I think it’s time to clock out.