I only slept about three hours last night. I’m not saying that out of self pity or out of pride, just the facts. I only slept about three hours last night and I had the best day because of it.

I know I am not alone when I say that my mind can be a prison. It is never quiet, always filled with restless, endless thoughts. At best, my mind is a imaginative playground for me, weird but wonderful. I can get lost within my own words, fixated on the perfect way to capture an emotion, a realization, or a moment. At worst, my mind is my own personalized nightmare. An inescapable storm of criticisms and insecurities taunt me.

Either way my mind can be distracting to say the least. My father lovingly refers to me as the mad professor type, so wrapped up in my own world that I can forget basic things. Sometimes it’s great, but most of the time my scattered-brain antics lead to trouble. Just last weekend, I left my car in a parking lot, lights on, engine running, keys in the ignition for over an hour because of my carelessness. It was only by some miracle that it was still there (and running) when I returned.

But today was wonderful because for the first time in a long time, my brain was put on hold. There’s a strange hollow feeling in my head, a vast emptiness and a blessed quietness. In the moments when my thoughts would normally clamor to be heard, there is nothing. There is space.

Time has taken on a loose, fluid quality. I am aware of it passing, but it slides around me, leaving me untouched. Was that two minutes ago or two hours? I cannot tell. The world seems to move by in fits and starts as my awareness of it flickers in and out with the rising and falling waves of exhaustion.

Perhaps most beautiful of all was the moments today when I felt a sort of uninterrupted happiness. It was the upward swell of ”Everything is great” and “You are okay!” Without the rigorous self-scrutiny, I was allowed to freely laugh and talk. I had one of those sparkling conversations in which the words are coming faster than they can be said and you are saying words for the sake of hearing them fill the air. It was beautifully reminiscent of a time when I didn’t guard my tongue and check my words.

Moral of the story: I should get less sleep more often. It makes life so much easier.

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