Insomnia

I am living up my bouts with insomnia for a while longer until I have to become an adult and get a real bedtime. But until that day arrives, I will entertain myself (and hopefully you) with my late night creative streak.

Often I go through phases of obsessing over one hobby or another. I had a scrapbooking phase which didn't result in the masterpieces I had anticipated; instead my designs came out more like a 3rd grade school project than anything else. There was also those few years that I wrote tons of poems. Edgar Allen Poe eat your heart out. I wrote across the spectrum of emotions and rhyme schemes. I am actually proud of several of them, but most are just jokey or angst filled. Painting is another hobby that had me trekking to Walmart at 4am to grab supplies for the project that could not wait for daylight. Usually once the sun rose I realized it could have waited and regretted inhaling all those paint fumes for naught.

I divulge all this information to bring you to my next point: books. Reading is the one hobby that has never waned. Possibly because it requires no skill and is essentially free. The love affair started in the early days of Kindergarten where I first discovered the enticing lure of books. Ever since then I have been reading continuously. Nancy Drew was my first beloved series and what turned me onto murder mysteries, where I eventually matured into being a Mary Higgins Clark fan. Biographies, Science Fiction, Sports, Novels, etc.; there isn't a genre I haven't delved in, even if only for a little bit.

Brian Jacques and Margaret Weis are my Science Fiction boos. I own every book in the Dragonlance Chronicles and Redwall series. The age old battle between good and evil is only made more interesting by their choice of using animals and mythical creatures to depict the conflict. Don't judge me.

Books are such a wonderful escape from the mundaneness of day-to-day life. I love their rich smell, the crisp feel of their pages between my fingers, the blanket and comfortable chair that most always accompany them, staying up all night or being late to something because I literally "couldn't put it down," the common thread I share with everyone else who has ever read the same story, but mostly the chance to view the world from someone else's perspective.

For some reason Fall is my favorite time to curl up with a good book. I guess the crisp pages and crinkling leaves remind me of one another. I cherish those moments outside as the breeze tickles my shoulder blades and my imagination runs wild with each turn of the page. As Fall inches around the corner, I will leave you with some of my favorite books from childhood to the present:

The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Redwall by Brian Jacques

City of Thieves by David Benioff

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Dragonlance Legends series by Margaret Weis

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell

Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne

When that next round of insomnia hits you, do as I do, open a good book and get carried away on your own adventure!