Thoughts in the Dark

I do not have a clock beside my bed. Retired from a corporate life I do not have to be up and going at any certain time. But even then I so hated the sound of the alarm I would set a time inside my head to be awake. That time was ten minutes before the alarm was set to go off. And most days I made that.

These days in retirement or self-employment (is there a difference) I do not need to rise at any give time but I play this game of guessing what time it is when something wakes me up. These days it can be needing to pee - yet again. Or my shoulder aching because I slept on it wrong. Or a dream I cannot remember. What keeps me awake are random thoughts I do not seem to be able to consign to the slot of tomorrow. But if left unattended they can become hamster wheel thinking. They spring from something unsettled in the course of a day or days.

Lately those thoughts in the dark have been about my camera. There was this lens which seemed to have self-destructed for no reason. And then the purchased replacement which did not work right. Then this upload of photos which seemed too dark. So at midnight I wondered if the second new lens did not work or is the fault in the camera. If it needs repaired I can use the old D90. Or is it the computer screen? It isn't like I have to photograph a wedding in the morning but still the only way of turning my mind off was to get up and turn the computer on.

Which is why at zero dark thirty I was editing photographs. And listening to the news.

I have always been a bit of a news junkie since the days traveling on business and turning on 24/7 CNN to make the hotel room seem less alien. A habit I could not seem to break even in my mountain retreat. So on the morning of 9/11 I was watching plane two hit tower two and then the first total collapse.

I am one of those humans who believes they can sense a disturbance in the force. And sometimes that is what wakes me. My tablet is on my bedside table because, I tell myself I used it for ebooks, but when I awake for some  reason unexplained I will open it to see if there has been a tsunami, earthquake, or volcano. An act of terrorism by our own home grown. And lately a revolt or assassination. The first scares me and the latter I secretly wish for but the president, vice-president, and Moscow Mitch are never in the same place at the same time. Unfortunate that.

It is when I am awake, the camera proved to be totally okay, dogs and cat alive and well, but the thoughts of gloom and doom still rattling around in my head I begin to worry about me. Then worry about the parts of the world still asleep. And so I blog another Dark Days Journal entry.

There are things I can do in the middle of the night if worried about my camera or computer. There is absolutely nothing I can do about the monster in the White Castle in the swamp. And that is truly scary. I was the kid who was not afraid of the Monster in the Black Lagoon but horrified by Tarzan.  Maybe in some ways I still am.

But knowing what time it is will not help.