30 Days of Blogging, Day 1

At night, especially as I'm getting ready for bed, my mind is filled with various thoughts. I think about things that happened during the day, things I wish would have happened during the day, or things that might happen tomorrow or later in the week. This isn't a new development for me: I have to fall asleep with either music playing on my iPod, or a movie or TV show playing on my laptop. If I don't have one of those going, I'm too distracted by my thoughts to sleep.

I've begun to think that in a way, this is an act of escape. Rather than processing all these thoughts a healthy amount, I push them away. I don't have that one person to whom I tell everything, because I don't trust anyone enough anymore. So I keep these thoughts to myself, and just let my mind run them over and over and over. Then I turn out the lights, lay down, turn on my distraction of choice (right now, "Friends"), push my thoughts out of my head, and sleep.

I'm still considering whether or not this is healthy--or more accurately, where on the spectrum it lies. I'm thinking it lies somewhere in the middle, probably healthier than using alcohol, but not as healthy as fully processing my thoughts. It might seem like a no-brainer or an understatement to say that it's healthier than alcohol, after all, that would be substance abuse! But really, isn't what I'm doing kind of like a drug? Or maybe I'm considering this way too seriously, and it really isn't a bad thing.

At any rate, multiple times as these thoughts are running through my head at full speed, I've thought about taking the time to write them down. After all, this same inescapable train of thought was what prompted me to begin blogging over 2 years ago. I never really clicked into it though, and quickly fell away from my blog. Its now been over a year and a half since I've last blogged. But in the mean time, I've blogged in my head. In moments when I've been absolutely consumed by thoughts, I've "written" in my head, and it has seemed to help me process. So, last night, as I was experiencing it yet again, I decided to challenge myself to 30 days of blogging. The rule is that I have to blog every day, for 30 days. I'm not holding myself to literal 24-hour days, so it doesn't work for me to post once at 11:30 pm, and once at 1 am before I go to bed. Nope. I consider my days from waking up to going to bed. I can write as soon as I wake up, in the middle of the day, or before I go to bed, but it MUST happen before I head to bed at night. Of course, last night when I made this decision, I decided to put it off and go to bed right away, and start tomorrow, which of course, is now today.

So here I am. And here is day one of my blogging challenge.