4:44 am

My head has a subconscious predilection for patterns.

I often wake during the night because I am an insomniac, inherited from my father. I look to my clock, and invariably it clicks to a familiar pattern my subconscious likes: 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, or 6:09. Despite the many sleep aids I have tried: over the counter, prescription, or behavioral, my brain remains a restless echo chamber for my subconscious.

I find comfort in those patterns, even though they haunt me. I feel a sense of order or precision in the universe when they come up with such regularity. Or, perhaps I have found evidence of the simulation we are all living in.

I find pleasure in palindrome words and numbers. They release dopamine in my brain and make me happy. Even without conscious effort, my eyes are always scanning for patterns in the world around me. I often find myself even tapping out repeating rhythms with my fingers or feet.

This comfort in order often seems at odds with the rest of my personality. I am an April Ares baby through and through. I leap before I look, and I like to shake things up for the thrill of the new experience. I mostly keep my infatuation with a pattern to myself, quietly acknowledging the numbers I just saw on a license plate or the words from a poster on a wall that form unexpected moments of micro-joy.

Being a lover of science, I also find comfort in the fact that molecules can be palindromic. Many nitrogenous sequences read the same backward and forwards. Maybe my love of pattern is coded into my DNA?

With pandemic fatigue swishing around in my head, I find I see the patterns more often. Likely, my brain is craving them increasingly to offset the depressive effect of our current situation. Whatever helps us get through, right?

Keep an eye out, and you will be surprised how many patterns leap out at you when you pay attention. I leave you with one of my favorites on so many levels:

"Do geese see God"