What Keeps Me Up at Night

The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep. (Ecclesiastes 5:12)

Lately, I've been having some problems going to sleep. This is not the same as having problems falling asleep. On the contrary, as soon as my head hits the pillow, I'm usually out in ten minutes or so. What I mean by problems "going" to sleep, is that I feel a peculiar sense of dissatisfaction around midnight that stops me from actually putting my head to the pillow.

Understandably, one may wonder what I mean by "dissatisfaction." Looking back, I've been asking myself and others this question for some time now.

"What keeps you up at night?"

On the surface, it's basically just a more interesting substitute for "what do you care about?" At least, that's what I've thought until now. But as I sit here at 2am once again unable to go to sleep, I'm beginning to see that the concept may actually have more depth to it.

People are not consistent. Our thoughts and personalities shift throughout the day, often for no rational reason. Reflecting on this, the meaning of "what keeps you up at night" suddenly gained an important disclaimer to me.

What keeps you at night is very different from what keeps you up in the day.

Many a giddy sleepover girl or partying student knows that people change at night. Darkness brings with it a primitive vulnerability that leads to new thoughts and reflections that often elude us at daytime. When it comes to talking with others, darkness facilitates openness and creates a new layer to social interaction that is both subtly and overtly different from daytime interaction.

In short, I guess what I've realized is that "What keeps you up at night?" is actually a question that probes into deeper aspects of the answerer's life, and may not be suitable as a good conversation starter. People are too complex to truly answer this question in a casual way, and to do so would be a disservice to what really goes on in the mind at night.

Now that that's out of the way, I guess we've arrived at the point where I actually answer my own prompt.

Here's what is keeping me up tonight:

-The moon is really bright and beautiful. I have not seen the moon like this for a long time. I wonder if it's because I haven't been looking?

-I have some regrets.

-I keep thinking about all the things I want to do tomorrow, but I don't have faith that I will finish them. Numerous times, I have pondered if I should just stay up the whole night so I can get started immediately when the sun rises. Somehow, this never happens thankfully.

-There's a lot to process about my overall situation, even if nothing much actually happened today.

-This computer is a devil, at least to my sleep.

...

Perhaps I am just not a laborer yet.

One Year, One Iris

It's been one year since I published my first post explaining what "One Iris" means.

When I first started writing, I wasn't sure how far I would be able to take it. Will college life make me too busy? What if I run out of things to write? Are my thoughts even worth writing about?

It's been 38 posts since then. Looking back at those posts (and the prior paragraph), one thing stands out to me. I ask a lot of questions. I think that writing is such a lively thing because the craft itself is indeed alive. The act of writing seems to me like breathing. One inhales life, and exhales writing, though the form of that writing is of course unique to the person. My soul as a writer seems to exhale questions I cannot answer. I would even say I often feel crushed by the magnitude of questions I conjure without resolution.

Whether this is a product of my own personality or just my stage in life, I do not know. I am a student. Does it follow then that my purpose is to seek answers? But what then should I be doing with those answers? Are they simply there to help me find a job or obtain some other possession? Should I be forming a concrete philosophy to live by? Can such a thing even exist?

I've been reading some Tolstoy lately, and a line from his diary really resonated with me. "The mind's game of chess goes on independently of life, and life of it." I think that somewhere among my incessant question asking is a desire to form a plan for every situation. Even if I don't have an answer, I want to always at least have a response or some other intelligent sounding babble to spit out. And yet the more I think about it, many of the best conversations I've had were spontaneous, and my fondest memories are often ones I did not anticipate.

One Iris itself was a product of a late night idea that had little planning or philosophy to back it up. But writing here has truly been a blessing. The final line of my first post says that this blog will be a window into one iris in this world. That mission has not changed, and I thank you for reading One Iris! Here's hoping the second year will be as fruitful as the first!