So I've been a "night person" as long as I can remember, though I've tried to change that over the years with no success. Here it is 9:54pm on a Sunday night, and I face the usual dilemma: go to bed, or start some sort of "project" that will most likely keep me up a while?

Hm. I guess I'll blog, and see how tired I am after that. So here I type. :)

My husband went to bed a while ago after a hectic day at church, and I've been trying to unwind and relax a bit. I got outdoors today and cleaned all the leaves and dead stuff out of my flower beds, trimmed the roses, and prepared them for spring - which is quickly approaching here in Georgia. I thought the fresh air and sweat would make me sleepy tonight. It did for about ten minutes while I sat on the couch watching the Dayton 500 earlier, but as usual my "second wind" arrived before I had time to tell myself, "just go to bed." And when the second wind arrives, it is too late.

What is it about the night, that I seem stirred awake more often than I feel lulled to sleep? I suppose there's something about the peacefulness I feel in the home when the phone stops ringing, when the neighborhood is still, when the prime time shows are done, and there's little distraction. But instead of my first thought being, "Guess it's time for bed," it's usually, "what could I get done tonight?" - perhaps because I feel like I can actually accomplish something without being interrupted. Or perhaps because when the world is asleep I feel like I finally have the place to myself or something.

I do seem to get more creative at night, though since I've been married I find it harder to write music at night because my husband is a light sleeper and I'm always afraid to wake him (though many nights he is up as late as I am or later! he just seems to vary more than I do in his sleeping patterns). So in these past few years, the night time usually leads to house cleaning, paper sorting, filing, blogging, video editing, bookkeeping, emails, brainstorming, reading, to-do-list making, schedule planning, set list choosing, chord chart printing, laundry folding, baking, or journaling.

Now mind you, for the past year my life has been a bit different in that I am not working a Monday-thru-Friday kind of job. I tend to work like 12-15 hour days Friday through Sunday. Then I take a day or two to rest (so my "weekend" is usually Mon-Tues) and catch up on emails, banking, bookkeeping and such (yeah, not much of a "weekend!"). Then a day to unpack and do laundry and to try to invest in my home life through friends/family/church events or lunch dates, etc. Then a day or two preparing all the music, teaching notes, merch inventory, and chord charts for my next trip. I finish laundry and pack it all up again Thursday, and leave on Friday.

So I do live a weird life and I'm really still not used to it. Compared to other "big" artists out there, my life really isn't even all that crazy. I don't know how well I'd handle a tour bus for weeks or months at a time, for example. So I'm thankful for this simple, though sometimes tiring and strange life I live.

For a practical example, when you don't get home from the airport until midnight Sunday night, you want to unwind and say hello to the cats and your husband and grab a turkey sandwich since you haven't eaten since noon several time zones ago....and then before you know it's 3am and you haven't even brushed your teeth...which makes me think right now, "Well, no wonder God made me a night person - He knew what kind of life I was going to be living in my thirties, and He had to make sure I'd be awake for it!"

So it's now Sunday night at 10:19pm and I was hoping maybe this blog would make me sleepy, which it sort of has...but I still can't help but look at my list of things I intend to do tomorrow and think, "but I could probably knock off two or three of those things tonight if I just stayed up a few more hours!"

Ahhhhh....but now that I think of it, it HAS been a long three weeks of being sick and now that I'm just starting to feel like myself again, perhaps sleep should be the FIRST thing on my to-do list this evening. My husband is several hours in to dreamland...and I'm thinking perhaps I should just go and join him.

The thing is, I just wish I could find the same "magic" in the day time as I find at night. During the day I feel so un-focused and scatter-brained most of the time. I wander around and end up usually feeling like I haven't used my time wisely at all. I spend half the day trying to FIND my motivation. Why is that? When the sun goes down and the sky goes dark, suddenly everything seems easier, manageable, attainable, possible.

I soooo wish I was one of those people who woke up the second the alarm went off (and didn't set it 30 minutes early so I could snooze it like 5 times without feeling guilty). I wish I woke up ready to face the day and all jazzed up to check everything off my to-do list before noon. It's like 1pm before I can even think in full sentences. I hate it when someone calls me at like 11am and says, "Did I wake you?" Really, they didn't. I have been awake since at LEAST 10 am...but who actually talks before noon? I prefer to wake up GRADUALLY.

Okay, so this was a nearly pointless blog about the random things I think about at 10:31pm on a Sunday night. I'm now afraid I might have gotten my THIRD wind and will never be able to fall asleep. I'm not sure if I have some sort of insomnia, or just A.D.H.D. I like to think of it as some sort of special "night vision" that only works in the dark.

Ah well. I suppose I shall TRY to put my head on the pillow and see what happens. If I'm not asleep in 20 minutes, though, I'm getting out of bed to work on my monthly Sales Tax report. ;o)

Until the next late-night blogging fest....this is Sheri signing off for now. Thanks for reading my pointless rambling which I guess you could say is my version of counting sheep tonight. They say if you clear the mind, and it makes for good Z's.

Hope your week is a great one, everybody!
Sheri