I work in an industry that thinks it must start at the buttcrack of dawn -- construction. For someone whose creativity comes alive about ten o'clock at night, this is a problem. We have a business -- it's not like I can quit and go elsewhere -- and it's responsible for putting food on the table, etc., so it's not like I can ignore it and wander off to dance to the beat of a different drum, but damn, I wish the world would function a little less rigidly.
I have always been a night owl; when I was in high school, I'd start a book late in the evening, thinking I could put it down and just finish it the next day, but that so very rarely happened. More times than I care to admit, I'd hear my dad's alarm go off -- Dad was a truck driver and had to get up at 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. sometimes for some of his shifts -- and I'd quickly extinguish my bedroom lamp and wait until he was up, dressed, gone and the last sounds of his truck turning the corner drifted back to me before I'd turn on the light and finish the book. Of course, I'd usually finish it at four in the morning (I am so not a speed reader like Diane -- man, I wish I was!)... and my alarm would go off at six or so for school. I think I passed the majority of my first and second hours in a sleep-deprived stupor. (Of course, the drive to school with my little brother drumming on my arms and head tended to get the adrenaline pumping.)
Even now, with all the grown-up responsibilities, I find myself trying to go to sleep at a decent hour (with the inevitable sleep deprivation mentioned below), and my brain just turns on. Answers to problems, or doing suicide laps over new problems, keep me awake. (Suicide laps = the term my eighth-grade basketball coach gave to the exercise of going back and forth on the court in a hard run, each time going to 1/4th of the court farther. Then starting over until at least one kid fainted. Fun coach.) But much more than just the worrying, or the solutions to problems... night time is the time when I simply feel more creative. My imagination kicks into overdrive, I am better able to free associate and weave in and out of a sort of lucid dream state and snag the details I need for whatever creative endeavor is in progress, and I easily get into a zone where time suspends and the world feels right and good. It's god-like in those moments, intoxicating and wonderful, and somehow more real because of the silence enveloping me in the night rather than the intrusion of daily living.
I completely frustrated both of my parents, who are morning people. My dad used to say in the mornings when he got me up, "Now, don't be scared. There's this really BIG yellow thing outside right now. It's called the sun. It won't hurt you, I promise." At some point a few years ago, I read where they had discovered in some scientific study that there is a gene which predisposes a person toward being a night-owl or a morning person; apparently they discovered there was some sort of link to this gene (and I think it was also linked to a specific eye-color? or something in the iris?) and a person's biological clock and it wasn't just that person being lazy in the morning, but being biologically programmed to do better at night. I showed my dad the study, and told my parents it was their fault (hee). They at least left me alone about it after that. I can only hope that whoever discovered it got to work nights while doing so. There should be a secret midnight rally or something, celebrating bucking the system.
Posted by toni at March 8, 2004 11:12 AM