At night when everyone else in my house is sleeping, I do my work. I’m more productive when I’m the only soul up, although this sometimes means I’m going to sleep when the rest of the U.S. is waking up for the day. It still occasionally makes Mike crazy that I’ll be up doing laundry, or hanging photos, or writing at 2 am, but he’s learned that this is just how I am. I can start my projects earlier in the day but there are too many worthy distractions – Annie, meals, sunshine – that delay me. At night, it’s just me.

Earlier I was unpacking boxes and getting lost in the contents. I came across old photos from when I lived in New York City, and then I went to my old blog to look up the stories I’d written to go along with the pictures. I was such a different person…healthy, self-assured, hopeful, innocent…so different than I could ever possibly be now. But that’s what happens when we move through life, I guess.

There’s something about the night that scares and exhilarates me. Some people see 11pm on the clock and think, “ugh, time for bed.” I see it and feel relief that the night is just beginning. The darkness cuts both ways – it hides the bad things but leaves me exposed. I feel sad and raw and reflective and hyper in the wee hours of the morning, emotions of mine that don’t always shine in the sun.

At night, I can be alone with my thoughts and live inside my head. I can plunge myself into my memories and become, say, that carefree New Yorker again, without neglecting the life going on around me. I can live in the past or imagine a present slightly altered from this one…one with Maddie here, and Rigby can talk and I can sing like Adele (hey, it’s my imagination). At night, things can be as they should while still being as they are, all while I, somehow, get my work done.