It’s shortly after midnight. I’m awake, not because it’s Friday night and I stayed up late doing something. Nope. I went to bed a bit early, in spite of the somewhat noisier Friday night guests, and crashed pretty hard. I slept deeply for a little while, but woke several times to discover I’d pulled my CPAP mask off in my sleep. Weird. I’m not surprised that woke me each time that it did; I struggle to fall asleep without the mask these days, in spite of it giving me occasional nightmares of having to wear MOPP gear. Not an experience I ever enjoyed, and not a bad dream I want to have. Tonight wasn’t about that, though, it was just weird. lol

I woke a little while ago, and my consciousness roused sufficiently to recognize more than that I had removed my CPAP mask – I recognized the likely cause(s). Acid reflux. Headache. Osteoarthritis. The exceptionally quiet darkness after a rather noisy evening. Now I’m awake. I took an antacid. I got a drink of water. I put on a capsaicin patch where my pain was worst. I took something for my headache. I got up and stood on the balcony looking out into the velvety dark night, out across the bay, feeling the cool air on my skin, and looking out into the night for some little while. No moon. Few stars – fog? Mist? Clouds? Across the bay, most of the homes along the Salishan Spit are dark tonight, which surprises me at this relatively early hour. No bobbing lights of shallow bottom boats on the bay. The tide is coming in. I stand awhile, listening, watching, embracing the solitude and the darkness.

It’s been a good couple days of painting. I’ve got another day of it, tomorrow. I miss my Traveling Partner – I’ll be happy to head home Sunday. I stand in the quiet darkness wondering how to bring “more of this” to my experience of life at home. I often wake during the night, at home, but rarely get up or doing anything much about it. Shared living subtly discourages it; I don’t want to wake anyone else. When I live alone, I often do something more than roll over and go back to sleep. Funny thing is, when I’m living alone, I don’t easily “just go back to sleep” – so getting up makes sense, and I do. No stress to it, just a way of living. When I am sharing a living arrangement, I tend not to be awake enough long enough to bother. I go back to sleep because going back to sleep makes sense. There’s no effort to it, these days, and no anxiety to being awake. I don’t actually know why there’s a difference in these experiences (for me). Perhaps living with my Traveling Partner simply finds me feeling somehow safer when I wake in the night, and more able to return to sleep because of it. I don’t generally “toss and turn” if I wake… I just go back to sleep, maybe after getting up to pee, or get a drink of water. Weird. I chuckle quietly to myself, that’s a known thing; humans are weird. lol

…The “more of this”, though, that I’d like to bring home with me, isn’t about the wakefulness in the night. I’m satisfied to roll over and go back to sleep, at home, in my own bed. I’m not grousing about that at all. It’s more… the art, the sense of creative presence and inspiration, the subtle feeling of freedom to “do whatever I want” in all the minutes of my day. Perhaps this really is best left to vacations and time away, alone… it sounds pretty “selfish” on paper, and a somewhat adolescent perspective on adult freedom – untethered from the very real responsibilities of adulthood that most definitely exist. I sit with the thought awhile, after I step back in from the chilly darkness of the balcony. I think about compromise. I think about choices.

I’ll go back to bed soon. I’m already both tired and sleepy. I’m only awake because my thoughts continue to meander wakefully, and I’m honestly sort of encouraging that, in spite of my awareness that sleep could easily overtaken me, given a chance. It feels like a luxury to enjoy the quiet of the night. The world sleeps, the moment is mine…