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Complicates/Compliments

I became curiously obsessed with sleep when I was in Brazil. That’s not exactly right; I actually became weirdly obsessed with the idea of the room I was in when I was asleep — what that physical space would be like, with me in it but not awake.

For some reason that I can’t put my finger on (but may, in all seriousness, have something to do with sleep-deprivation, ironically; I don’t think I slept longer than seven hours a night while I was there, and for the first few days of the trip, I think five hours was my limit), I started imagining the hotel room I’d been staying in, with me in bed, comatose. It became this strange existential idea, as if when I was asleep, I wasn’t actually me and there was this empty me-shaped shell in this hotel room, which was otherwise empty and devoid of life.

That idea stuck in my head for a couple of days; the image of a me asleep in that hotel room and the idea that, when I was asleep, my body was some other thing, not actually me. Both were new thoughts, although at least one ranges back to my teenage self, when I’d fall asleep and feel as if — when that was happening — the real me was shrinking and curling up inside my body, which was some kind of shell instead of actually being me.

At some point in thinking about this over and over, the thought struck me that what I was actually concerned about was the idea that, in Brazil, I was sleeping alone. If I had been with someone, the unexpected train of thought went, then their presence would have meant that I stayed “me” and didn’t abandon my body, as if the whole thing was a bizarre version of the “If a tree falls in a forest and no-one is there, does it make a sound” thought experiment.

Perhaps this all came from anxiety of sleeping alone in an unfamiliar place, or missing Chloe; perhaps it was just the specter of a mind that needed more rest and instead turned in upon itself to try and turn the very concept of sleep into an existential crisis. (There’s no reason it couldn’t be both, of course.) All I know is, when I landed back in Portland, I began to think about sleeping easier, for all manner of reasons.

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And Now I Finally Realize

I’ve been thinking about the idea of writing as discipline lately. I think it’s because I’m coming up on the year anniversary of posting three times a week on here, which feels at once an achievement and nothing at all, given how rambling and free-associating this can be. Nonetheless: a year. (Technically, it’ll be a year next week.)

I’m far enough away from the decision to be suspicious of any recollection of why I decided to write here more regularly, never mind on a thrice-weekly basis, but I know that part of it was a selfish desire to do something for me; writing that wasn’t work, wasn’t fulfilling an external brief or purpose. I didn’t have any intention at the time to even re-read what I’d written and posted — I still haven’t, for the most part — and I knew pretty clearly that no-one else was reading, either, so the point was the act of writing itself. Doing the thing.

(I know at least two people read now; thankfully, it’s my two favorite people in the world, so I don’t feel too self-conscious about the rambling. If there are others, don’t tell me.)

Despite the fact that I was only doing it for myself, I found myself surprisingly strict when it came to the structure of the thing; it was quickly obvious that three posts every week was very important to me for some inexplicable reason. Tradition? Superstition? Simply keeping a promise I made to myself? Whatever the reason, the idea of skipping posts was almost immediately anathema to me: there would be a post on Monday, a post on Wednesday, and a post on Friday no matter what.

And here I am, a year later, having done that, feeling quite pleased with myself. Even though, as I said, I don’t re-read what I’ve written and it might all be nonsense. (It probably is, let’s be honest.) Is it simply that I’ve kept up the routine, maintained the rhythm? Possibly, but that didn’t happen accidentally. There’s a sense of genuine achievement in knowing that I managed to be that self-disciplined all year, no matter all the everything else that was going on at the time, even if it was “just” this personal, private space.  That I continued to make time for something just for me, after years of writing myself off or talking myself down.

It’s a good feeling, really.