Sleepy Brain

I haven't posted for a while as I seem to have no time left at either end of the day to think creatively. Lately I've been rewarding myself with veg-out TV which has all the elements of heroin without the expense or the track marks. I talk the talk endlessly with students about having thinking time before starting to write but over the last few days I wondered how much of this is true.

This morning I woke at 5.45 with the "critical incident" clearly outlined in my brain - the eureka moment that I'd been mulling on for the last fortnight. I gave up on trying to go back to sleep (I had promised myself a much needed lie-in) and decided that if I didn't write this all down, I would lose the insight. I speculated on the potential of "sleepy brain" - not unlike dream diary but rather than recording dreams, noting the moment when the brain had finally processed something and was ready to summarise before getting distracted by the constant minutiae of the day. I awoke with a clear rationale and sense of direction for my assignment and the need to set all this down. However, first I had to get up and find my laptop. In the process of this I had a pee, fed the cat, made a cup of tea, tried to log onto blogspot (whilst feeling guilty that I'd failed to keep a daily blog, then wondered if keeping a public blog put me in danger of being plagarised, then chastised myself for considering that anyone would READ this blog). I had completely forgotten my password so then had to re-submit a new password (only to be told that I couldn't use a previous password...obviously the belatedly remembered lost password) this meant going onto my Hotmail account to retrieve the reset link whilst desperately trying not to read any other emails because THE WHOLE POINT OF DOING THIS AT 6am IS SO THAT I WOULDN'T LOSE THE INSIGHTS I'D GAINED WHILST NOT BEING DISTRACTED BY THE STUPID MINUTIAE OF LIFE! Daniel Stern in his work "The Present Moment" records all the thoughts that can inhabit a few fleeting moments in a person's mind whilst deciding what to put on a piece of toast; how many of those thoughts form part of a compost on which to grow something valuable and insightful and how much forms a sludge that blocks the brain and uses up our energy?

I think that - despite being a night person who is slow and stupid first thing in the morning - sleepy brain may be the best channel for my writing now. It is in the quiet and unpeopled hour before life starts ringing its bell that I can allow reflection in.