This morning as I tried to go back to sleep, a wonderful idea for a blog post came to me. I chose to fall asleep rather than write it down. It’s gone.
This has been the story of my life. I have created many great ways for me to ensure that I write my ideas down, but alas, I lose way too many.
When I was young, Dad told me to always make sure I had a notepad and pencil beside my bed so that if something came to me in the middle of the night, I could capture it. This plan was good for remembering great ideas as well as clearing out my mind when too many things were spinning up there so as to ensure more sleep.
I’ve used that plan numerous times when I’m having trouble sleeping. I write out everything that my mind is working on. The funny thing is, it’s usually only a few sentences worth of stuff, but once I give it solidity, it stops growing and fluffing itself up in my mind. Then, it becomes exactly what it needs to be – a note on a piece of paper. I can choose to manage it later or throw it away.
Evernote is my go-to for digital note taking. It resides on every piece of electronic hardware that I own and syncs across all of them. I take a note in one place and it is everywhere. Beautiful. I also have a wonderful journal / calendar / notebook that sits beside my bed. Well, okay, it is now under a pillow because the cats love to play with the wire binder. Anyway. I write in the journal every night before I go to sleep and if I have lots of great ideas, there is tons of awesome room for me to write those down. So, I have no reason not to capture what is happening in my head.
But this whole great idea while I’m half asleep thing? Bah. Drives me batty. If I wake up enough to start writing things down, I bring myself to full wakefulness. Knowing that, I often try to tell myself over and over what the idea is so that I’ll remember it the next time my eyes open. I’m nearly 57 years old (that number just flew out of my fingers – good for me, I’m getting better about this). You’d think that after all these years, I’d have learned that just won’t happen. Apparently not.
So rather than some very clever post with an incredibly interesting story (yep, cracking myself up), you get this.
How do you clear your mind when it’s overloaded at night and you can’t sleep? How do you capture ideas and thoughts and things you want to remember? Or do you?
And I know this isn’t an age thing – I’ve had this problem for an entire lifetime. Whew.
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My brother – Jamie McFarlane – just published the second book in his Witchy World series today. Check it out here!
