The Curious Creativity of 1 to 4am.

There’s a certain stillness that settles over the world between those hours…probably because most sane people are asleep!

The streetlights hum their quiet lullaby, the rest of the house lies suspended in a dreamless hush and I, an exhausted, twitchy-eyed insomniac, lie very much awake, inventing entire universes in my head while the dog, limbs twitching, dreams of chasing squirrels.

Sleep?

I’ve heard of it. Sounds wonderful.

For some of us, sleep is elusive, an uninvited guest who shows up at midnight with a suitcase full of racing thoughts, existential dread and a sudden burning desire to reorganize the underwear drawer or write a screenplay.

And yet, oddly, wonderfully, this is when my creativity blooms.

Not during responsible hours when I should be making rational decisions and meal-prepping. No, it’s in the ghost hours between yawns and frustrations that my best ideas arrive, wearing mismatched socks and a high pony.

Something about the 1am to 4am window short-circuits my inner critic. Maybe it is because the rest of the world is asleep so the pressure to perform evaporates.

Either way, ideas don’t have to be good in these hours, It’s a playground for the subconscious.

And oh, the things I accomplish.

Between 1:00 and 1:47am, I make detailed five-year life plans that rival small government infrastructure proposals.

I rethink my career, restructure my finances (poorly), and mentally draft my acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in, “Figuring It All Out While Horizontal.”

Around 2:00am, I casually construct a plan for world peace. It usually involves free espresso, universal basic income, compulsory therapy for people who say like all the time, and, depending on the night, a global moratorium on outdoor pot smoking. Then I edit the crap out of my daily post.

By 3:00am I descend inward. That’s when the inner work begins. I find my center, explore past wounds, forgive old grudges (never), reconnect with my purpose and analyze why I ate chocolate before bed and always punish myself afterwards.

I pledge to drink more water (I won’t!)

I wouldn’t recommend insomnia. It is not a lifestyle. It is  a slow leak in your cognitive balloon. But I’ve stopped trying to fight the muse when she shows up in a bathrobe at 2:17am holding a Post-it note and a slightly manic grin.

In the encounter lies the silver lining of sleeplessness, a sliver of magic in the dark. A strange clarity.

With any luck, the creation of the blueprint for peace on earth. Or, at the very least, an idea for yet anotherreally good blog post.