However, as my household is either at rest or out on royal errands, I decided to sneak to my desk with the goal of stilling the whirling dervishes of my mind. Too blurry-eyed to read, too sore and restless to discern the constellations in my stucco ceiling, I gave it up as a bad job and set my feet on the birch wood floor. Nothing requiring anything but my hands and my smile.Īnd … I was wide-awake at 6am.

Following a great week of work at my desk, there was a glorious Saturday before me: a couple of hours of stacking wood in warm weather (it is just below the freezing mark here), my day to make eggs and toast for the family while Kerry prepares her neighbourhood-famous Thai curry, some guitar time with Nicolas, the beginning of a reno project, a hike, an evening with friends…. Tonight is time-travel night where the gods of time steal an hour from our lives (where I live anyway), and at 8am tomorrow morning (really, 7am) I will be playing bass to Brit-pop worship songs. However, I do tend to sleep well after about 3:30am, so I was looking forward to this morning.

These torturous midnight hours of hazy, half-insomniac puzzles and quandaries and obsessions, the darkness that infuses weariness into the bone-soul of life… I would purchase a single eight-hour night of sleep if it weren’t so dear. After weeks of too little sleep, I have had two terrible half-nights awake.

Richard finch wood carver