Clear Thoughts, Lost in Twilight
Have you ever experienced a moment of sudden inspiration while you were half asleep, feeling like you'd solved a difficult problem or cracked a code but then forgotten it upon waking up? This somehow reminds me of that old black-and-white show, The Twilight Zone. My wife has a habit of watching the series before bed to help her fall asleep. It’s like that all of our genius and creative ideas slip into the Twilight Zone just as we wake up.
It happened to me this morning… It was around 3 am, I think,. As my dog was stirring, I vaguely remember looking at the clock as he did so.
I was half-asleep and lost all of my great work while thinking up great ideas for this blog; perhaps I forgot to hit the save button before shutting down. ;) I was contemplating all the great blog posts I would write and how I’d re-brand myself. (Check out my posts on Branding). I remember thinking, “Oh man, that’s a great idea; I need to remember that when I get up.” Well, I think you can guess what happened next. But it was worse than that; it wasn’t just a single Idea; I was having a complete brainstorming session with myself. I feel like I had at least six or seven good ideas.
After my coffee, and only one thought left in my head … Yeah, it wasn’t a great one either, something about running with tortoises. LOL, yeah, IDK. I decided to ask the internet what causes this because this has happened to me so many times. I can remember struggling all day more than once with a tech-related problem or troubleshooting one of the electrical issues on one of my motorcycle builds. There’s got to be a simple reason for this. In some cases, I can clearly remember the solutions to the problems I somehow solved when half asleep and prove how powerful the mind and imagination can be to solve complex problems all in our heads, like some crazy math problem.
I blame it on my brain's nocturnal antics, but the Internet had its own suggestions.
“During sleep, our brain waves oscillate between different stages, from the slow, rhythmic hum of deep sleep to the frenetic dance of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, where dreams run wild. It's in these transitional phases, during light sleep or upon waking, that our minds are primed for creative breakthroughs. In this hazy state, our cognitive filters loosen their grip, allowing ideas to flow freely without the usual constraints of logic and reason. It's the perfect breeding ground for innovation, where serendipity reigns supreme, and the boundaries between imagination and reality blur into oblivion.”
That's not exactly helpful, but I figure the next time inspiration strikes me in the early hours of the morning, I’ll wake myself up and jot it down or risk losing it forever. But I somehow fear that waking will cause me to lose all thought and memory of it, but not waking to write it down seems like the bigger risk. I’ll never know when the next stroke of genius might strike, so I have a notepad and pen ready to go the next time it does.
Perhaps all of this serves as a reminder of the creativity that is within us, urging us to capture our ideas before they slip away back into the Twilight Zone.
