Why is 3am always the point at which I awaken in the middle of the night? Maybe it’s the time when the veil between worlds is the thinnest, as some believe. Or maybe my body has just been conditioned over the past 3 years to wake up at this precise moment every night.

Whatever the reason, it’s a pain. I wake up sluggish the next morning, trying to shirk off the night’s bad dreams and cursing my inability to create better sleeping patterns. Yet another thing I am forced to admit I have no control over.

But sometimes I am disciplined enough to open the Notes app on my phone and write, recording those misty thoughts and troubling dreams. When I return to those captured thoughts during the day I am often surprised by what I find. And often, when I sit down to write with serious intention, I think I am writing about one thing only to discover I am always writing about the same thing.