I’ve never been a great sleeper. My parents always tell stories of how difficult I was to put to bed as a baby. I can remember hating sleep as a little kid and as a teenager I always had problems falling asleep and staying asleep.

I thought my lack of sleep was relatively normal (my parents aren’t great sleepers either) until college when I’d find myself in the dorms wide awake while everyone else was fast asleep. Sometimes I’d pace the halls to try to kill my energy or I’d write in my notebook to try to clear my thoughts.

Over the last few years I’ve gone through periods where I’ve slept a lot more than I ever have before. I always hear how great sleep is and how more sleep indicates better long term health so I figured wanting 8 hours of sleep (or more) must be good.

The way the brain and the body work together is tricky. The more sleep my body wants, the less active my brain seems. For the last several months I’ve had night after night of uninterrupted sleep (6-8 hours) and my brain has been on auto-pilot. I’ve struggled to come up with new ideas and concepts at work and I’ve stopped working on creative projects at home.

Tonight I’ve had the worst night of sleep I’ve had in a long time. Collectively I’ve had about 4 hours of sleep and most of that was in one hour increments where I snapped awake for 30 minutes or so before resting again. During this sleepless time I’ve come up with about a million ideas for home art projects and projects at work. I’ve been up sketching things out and taking notes for the last several hours. It makes me feel invigorated but also a little bit crazy.

Am I the only one like this? Does anyone else work better on less sleep?