I woke up at 2 am this morning. Wide awake, eyelids fixed open. I decided to roll with it, so I went to the living room and figured I’d do some creative writing.
I had nothing but this story's beginning, which I’m still not sure I’ll ever use: “No one ever believes they will be the next person to get murdered. It would be hard to live that way. Yet murder happens.”
I mean, sure, that’s very on-brand for me, but I'm not sure where to go from there now, and I wasn’t at 3 am.
So, it wasn’t a lack of ideas, but it felt like my writing brain was stuck in neutral. I thought I could start randomly typing nonsense and hope the downhill motion might kick things into gear, but no.
I went back to sleep at five and woke at 9 am. Without meaning to, I fell into a biphasic sleep pattern, which was quite common in the days before humans could keep lights on 24/7 (if we chose to).
Here’s how the Sleep Foundation on Biphasic Sleep:
Biphasic sleep describes a pattern of sleep in which a person sleeps in two segments, or phases, per day. Although many people sleep for seven or eight hours straight each night, biphasic sleep may be more common than you think.
The Sleep Foundation helpfully notes that “people who enjoy siestas are considered biphasic sleepers.”
I’ve never had a great relationship with sleep. I’m just like my mother that way, and I’m sure it’s an inherited trait. I’m a shallow sleeper, waking readily and coming to full awareness quickly. As I’ve grown older (I turned 55 last Thursday), I’ve worried about how much lack of sleep has affected my general health and tried to develop better “sleep hygiene.” I find it relatively easy to fall asleep. Unfortunately, I rarely find it easy to go back to sleep once I wake up.
Maybe I romanticize it a bit, and that’s the problem. Something is alluring about the 3 am world. There is this sense you’re ahead of everyone, somehow. You’ve got the lead on the day; you can do so much. A part of me also remembers working overnight shifts when I was a TV master control operator, hitting the 3 to 4 block, and feeling like I was a sentinel—keeping watch for what? I don’t know. But rather than feeling lonely, something I’ve also battled through most of my life, I luxuriated in that quiet hour and the sense that outside, all was still and waiting for the sun.
I don’t recommend biphasic sleep. It’s a function of insomnia, anxiety, and curiosity for me, this fractured way of getting rest. I think humanity was wise to throw it off in favor of a total of 7 or 8 hours of unbroken rest. But I’ve decided not to fight it too hard when it happens, to see where it goes.
That’s what I do with many things, including this newsletter. It’s a bit of a ramble, but I wanted to make it worthwhile by dropping a little knowledge about a lesser-known way of getting rest and perhaps touching on my uneasy relationship with the night.