Open Letter to the Sleepless

You can't sleep. Oh, you can get to sleep. Sometimes. An hour here, a few hours there. But never the night through. The dead of night, when the air is too hot and the sky is too dark, that's when you wake up and can't get back to sleep.

Maybe it was a dream. The one with the stairs? Up, down, over and over again. Or the dream with the doors. Or the task you need to complete but can't because you don't know what it is, and the dream ain't telling you.

Point is, you're awake. And all the dark thoughts are awake too, ready to visit you. The weird email from a friend that you can't parse. The job that isn't so hot right now. The project that you should be so much further along on. How can you sleep when so much is wrong? When you're messing up so much? When you can't do anything right because you can't sleep…

It's a pretty little trick, isn't it? The way that feeling gets stronger the more you try to ignore it, like a tide that pulls you out to sea even faster because you're swimming against it. But the real trick is that you have to keep swimming, because giving up doesn't get you anywhere good. So you try. But you're tired. And it just keeps getting harder to go on.

Stop.

Just stop for a second and listen to me.

You're amazing. You've produced wonderous things. Stories, pictures, jokes, events, friendships, groups, children, words, images, ideas. You've made them. And not everyone can do that. People like what you've done, and they want to see more, hear more from you. I want to see more from you.

You're not a fraud. You're not a dabbler. You're not a joke.

You're a producer. A maker. A creator.

Maybe what you make isn't something solid, that folks can hold in their hands. But that doesn't make it any less real. It can still change the shape of the universe. And you made it.

So of course you're tired. Of course those night-thoughts are visiting.

No wonder you can't sleep. You've got a lot on your mind.

You've been producing, and that's hard. It invites doubts and fears right inside your brain. That's natural. But it doesn't mean you have to feed them.

Listen carefully to all those little, squirmy, deep blue ideas that creep inside your head when you're staring at the ceiling. Listen to them so you can understand how strange they are, how twisted and misshapen they've gotten. Note how little they have to do with reality or even possibility.

And then let them go. Name them as lies and irrationalities. Then politely show them the door.

Not sure they're lies? Repeat them to the people around you, the people you trust, the people who trust you. When you hear how much folks laugh when they hear those lies, you'll know. And then you can get the deep, dark muck out of your head and get to sleep.

So you can wake up and start doing what you do best.

Making.

Because I can't wait to see what you do next.