Cold, Sleepless Nights
I’ve been having strange sleeping patterns this week. One night, I’ll wake up at one or two in the morning, after three or four hours of sleep, and be wide awake, knowing immediately that I’ll not be getting back to sleep. Then, the next night I’ll get eight solid hours, way more than normal for me, I guess my body’s way of catching up from the night before. Tonight was a three hour sleep/wake up at one, toss and turn for an hour, then say screw it, and get up, kind of night.
It’s 3:00 a.m. now, and if tonight’s anything like the other night, I’ll finally be able to get back to sleep around four, for an hour or so, and then just have one of those days where I’m a bit crispy around the edges, but able to manage, with just enough energy to get through the day.
Since I haven’t written or posted anything yet this year, after reading some other stories, and doing some laundry, I finally said, what the heck, why not write something?
A part of me wanted to see how many days I could go without writing and posting something. I kind of got back on a roll the second half of December there, and was posting practically daily, but the holiday weekend threw my writing momentum off, and now this week has turned out to be a lot busier than I expected it to be.
I didn’t do any intentions for this year. It’s not that I don’t have any — I do — they’re just a little more internalized, and I thought, let’s just keep it that way. I’m becoming more inclined lately to allow my internal life to develop a little more independently of my external life, if that makes sense.
While I have enjoyed living out loud for a good five and a half years or so —I am also recently enjoying the cultivation of a more private side, these past several months in which I have dialed back my level of storytelling here. There is some kind of a balance between the two that is healthy, and I was feeling out of balance on the external side a few months ago.
But what else are you going to do, when you’re a writer, a storyteller, and it’s 3:00 a.m. in the morning, and you’re wide awake? You write it out.
Dreams have been interesting lately. Very detailed, very involved, lots being worked out in dreamland, it seems. I’ve also gotten back to some deep meditations this week. In one, just as I was coming out of it, the number 23 just bubbled up, with some sense of significance. I haven’t figured out, yet, what significance it will have, but, perhaps we’ll soon find out.
It’s been bitterly cold for about a week, now. Nothing compared to what Jeff is experiencing up north in the frozen tundra, or some folks further west, but the coldest we’ve seen in at least a couple years. Temps have been dipping into single digits on the F scale, just about daily, for a week now. That’s thrown me off my newfound fitness routine, just a tad.
As a general rule, when it drops below 15, I’m not jumping in the swim spa out back, even if the water is set to 90 F — getting out becomes just a little too shocking when it’s that cold. I’m fine in the 20’s, and even upper teens — but 15 is where I draw the damn line. I still manage to do some workouts inside, but swimming has become my go-to exercise — I really love to swim. Not so fond of freezing, though.
Today’s the last day for the Christmas lights. After they turn off tonight, I’ll unplug them, as we plunge into the darkest time of year. The month of January always feels like that to me. The holiday season brightens everything up, with lights and lots of colorful doo-dads all about to distract us from the darkest days, but once they go away, we have that month of dead winter.
A part of me likes it. I like going deep inside, and seeing what’s in there. This is the best time of year to do that. It’s all a part of the cycle of the seasons. I need this part as much as I need the dead of summer, the heat and the outsideness of summertime. I could never live in a climate that is warm all the time. I need these cold winter days.
Of course, it always helps to have a furnace that works! Ours sent up a signal a few weeks ago that it was on its last legs. We had the guy out twice, just as the winter weather was really settling in, and quickly knew it was time to replace that sucker. We got the installers in just in time, before the deep freeze started. We decided to replace the whole system, heat and air, but scheduled the heat part first.
They were going to come back out this week to do the air part, but the sudden demand for their services all over the Northern Virginia area, for people desperately needing heat, has postponed the second part of the install. No problem, there. As long as they get it in before June, July, we’re good. We have heat — we’re happy.
Stay warm, my Story Hall friends, wherever you are. I think I have successfully lulled myself into being tired enough to crawl off for another hour or so of shuteye. Thanks for listening!
