Dream with my eyes open, sleep when I'm dead.

It’s 2:37am.

I’ve been noticing this number come across the clock a lot lately. Usually at about this point of my night, I’m finding myself out somewhere- after a show, or just out with friends.. “last call” lies just around the corner and then we go our separate ways after a night well spent. Afterwards however, I don’t always crawl into bed and catch some Zs as they say. And some nights, like tonite, I find myself alone- just me and a brain that seems to remember everything else but how to sleep.

“Another night, sitting awake. The silence is suffocating
and my thoughts are a blur. I would give anything for some sleep.
Rest for my body, for my mind.
A restless soul is not such good company.
I wish I was elsewhere. I wish I was asleep.”

Sleeeeeep. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a LONG time. Insomnia’s always been a friend of mine. Blame it on what you will- crazy events in my life that’ve happened at night.. having a good company of caffeine while learning to work on the road.. or just being a classic night owl that loves when darkness falls.. Whatever the reason is, I often seem to be wide awake in body and mind, lately almost ridiculously so, while the rest of the world sleeps.

“I start to see more when my eyes are closed.
My blurry thoughts cave in on me. I used to enjoy dreams,
and then the dreams turned against me. Now I only want rest.
Quiet for my mind and stillness for my body.
I wonder if death is such a bliss. Eternal sleep. Endless rest.
But not blank, like this ceiling that I stare at. The hum of the silence
blended with thoughts grows louder.
Darkness moves in as I toss and turn.
The shadows are screaming and moving through this dark room.
I almost forget that I’m alone. My head is heavy.
I still wait for sleep to find me.”

Overall, I don’t know that I consider it a bad thing. My mind is most creative in the “lost hours” of the night. Although most mornings after sleep does catch up with me, I wake up to pages of paper half scribbled out and half just insomnia-fueled ramblings that I already no longer fully relate to. But something about my sleepless mind is a part of me I can’t imagine living without and is an artistic side of me I have to always try and channel into. But nighttime does have its, [no] pun intended, ‘dark’ side. It can be absolute torture not to be able to fall asleep. You get extremely tired sometimes and just can’t seem to shut yourself off enough to recharge. And needing the sleep or not, sometimes it’s just no fun to be stuck alone with your thoughts, because at least for me- thoughts always run wilder while the mind is attempting to take a break.

“My eyes open and close. Memories push their way into my mind
and then fade away.
I begin to talk as if you were right here with me.
Everything seems backwards. I stare at the blackness,
wishing it would swallow me soon. I dream of sleep as I lay awake.”

I’m not always alone while the night passes by. You meet some of the most interesting people at these hours. From when we were kids with nothing better to do than run around Walmart all night (the graveyard shift employees WILL enjoy the toy aisles with you..), to the folks I meet at 24-hour truck stop gas stations on my overnight cross-country drives, and just to the friends I find myself awake with when we don’t feel like sleeping. Over the last few years, I can count so many great pre-sunrise conversations I’ve had with people, and they’ve been the most real, fun, deep, amazing-in-many-ways hang out times that I’ve ever had.

But on some nights, the sandman makes a pretty successful run and forgets only me. Like tonite, where I sit awake with my notebook, a familiar late-night friend. (and hopefully I will actually end up posting this blog later..) My mind refuses to stop thinking. I try closing my eyes, but they seem more wide awake when they’re shut. A strange energy has always found me at night. I’m not sure if this fits into a pending definition of labeling myself as ‘insane’, ha, but at least I’m gonna put it to good use. Being awake both night and day is like getting a double lifetime. More time to live.. to think.. to love.. and, of course.. to write.

“My thoughts swirl around. Some I fight, some I surrender to.
And then the shadows stop dancing. They’ve fallen asleep.
The silent band has stopped playing. Everything is sleeping.
Except for me.”

Sweet Dreams,
~emjae.

(P.S. I know I was going to spice up my words a bit with some of my photos in these blogs.. but instead of pictures this time, I used bits of something I wrote back on another one of my sleepless nights years ago. Insomnia has been a friend of mine, and of my notebook, for as long as I can remember..)

Readable Writing

I’ve always been a writer.

I’ve always had a billion thoughts running through my head all the time. But I’ve never been much of a talker, people remind me of that all the time- from my Kindergarten teacher who says I’m the quietest kid she could remember, to people out at shows that say I haven’t said a word all night. I’m a thinker. I live inside my head (which will be a whole other blog, coming soon..) I can’t always figure out how to get my thoughts out from my mind in a way that makes sense when spoken to other people, but I could sit and write them down in notebook after notebook. Forever.

The reasons I write? Clear my head. Try to make sense of the things I think. To leave my thoughts behind as a trail of my life. My written words are what I feel show my personality the best. What I really think, feel, and believe.. how I deal with things.. the way I try to figure out life.. or just what I spend the days of my life doing. I’m constantly writing. Every day. I keep notebooks everywhere. And sometimes when it looks like I’m texting on my phone, I’m actually just typing thoughts to myself.

The reason I started a blog, aside from a bunch of folks constantly telling me I should, was to share some of the things I’ve written with people. But the reason I keep finding it hard to actually post things in this blog is that I’m scared what I write isn’t going to be readable. And readable, to me, is that you enjoy what you read. You are interested in it, you understand it- whether you agree with it or not. And that you feel some kind of emotion, or just a slight change in how you see something in the world after you’ve thought about it the way I do.

I recently found a book from 1949 that I’m starting to scan through- called “The Art of Readable Writing”. It jumped out to me right away, as I’m going through this, well, not so much of a writer’s-block as it is a.. poster’s-block. :P It’s been an interesting book so far, talking about adapting how we write from Aristotle, the importance of being trivial, degrees and results of plain talk, unpredictable words and readers.. and so on. All of those being chapters from the book by the way- yeah, it’s very “1949”..

Lately as I write what happens, what I feel, things I think as I ponder life- my thoughts have been so deep and personal that sometimes I can barely understand them myself. So I don’t want to share that stuff with anyone. Of course, I’m always gonna have thoughts that I might turn into words on paper, but won’t ever intend on anyone else ever reading. You ever find papers of things that you’ve written when you were younger? Desperate scribbles from a mindset you no longer have, and you think now, as you’ve moved on from that angst-filled frame of mind that seems silly to you now, how happy you are that NOBODY has ever seen those words? Ha, I definitely have, and I want to make sure that the things I write now aren’t going to be in the future as embarrassing as some things I’ve written in the past.

But my plan as I started this thing was to not think so much about what I’ve written, and just post things. I keep my completely private thoughts in their own place, and then I can collect from wherever else my words find themselves and then put them out there for you to read. However in the last few weeks as I lay out blogs, I re-read them and decide they are better left unsaid to the world. Either from being too complex, too confusing, too uninteresting, or just maybe too personal for public knowledge right now.

But as far as the stuff I DO decide to share with people- what am I going to leave for that? Do I want the only things I post to be shallow thoughts on an easy-minded blog? What kind of writer would I be then? Do I want to publicly write the same safe, common thoughts that we ALL have and can relate to? Words that leave nothing in your mind, won’t challenge you, or don’t stretch your own thoughts?
…
Of course not. I want to be a writer of emotion and substance, but above all, I just want to write what’s true in my mind, and my heart, and my life. Something tells me that if I stick with that, you’ll be satisfied enough with each blog of mine that you read.

So stay tuned.

~emjae.

P.S. and from now on, my blogs are gonna have some of my photos in them as well. Because aside from my written words, my pictures are my life. ;)