Day and Night

I love the night. I think it is beautiful, peaceful, and serene. I also seem to only get writing done at night. While I can force myself to get writing done during the daytime, it's far more difficult than writing while the sun is down. Sometimes I think about how productive I could be if it was always night time. Then I realize that it isn't what I thought.

In the late winter, when we only get 6-8 hours of sun a day, I sometimes sleep through those hours. There have been times where I go to bed around 6 AM and get up at 3 PM. At that point, Ii'd have a couple of hours before sundown. But it would take me that long to fully wake up. When I would see that it was already getting dark out, I would feel terrible. I would say that I wasted the day. I feel like there was so much other stuff to do that I never got a chance to do because the day was already over.

Now, I admit that this flies in the face of the 8/8/8 idea that you never lose time, just rearrange it. However, the inherent understanding that night time is the end of the day is far stronger and harder to ignore. So in this case, although I basically have a full day of night time, I still don't feel productive. In fact, I feel worse than ever.

I have learned two things from doing this. One is that humans need to have both daylight and night time in their life. If you only have one or the other, it really messes with your psyche. The other thing is that writing is not so much a night time activity as it is an end of the day activity. I like to write after I have done everything else that I need to do, I'm a little tired, and I can slip into bed right after. The most important thing for a writer is balance.