So, you know what’s amazing about this challenge? Besides the fact that it is forcing me to write every day, after a six-month hiatus? Things that happen to amuse me.

For instance, today yesterday oh who knows when it was, I was chatting with my friend Guster on FB while we were both insomniacking. (Yes, yes, I know it’s not a word, but you know what I mean, so deal with it.)

His question:  “Do you know what you’re writing about for N?”

My response, without thinking about it: “Nope.”

His response? “Nice.”

Then we LOLed and he told me the perfect topic to write about.

I had considered writing about naysayers, but decided to hold that for when I write my “So You Want to be a Writer” series (whenever that is), or needlework, which is actually a pretty good topic for me, since I was trained in the fine art thereof. However, I decided to write instead about the topic my pal gave me:

N is for Night

Driving into the city of Atlanta. At night. Photo by dSavannah. That means me, yo.

Oddly enough (or maybe not), my #AtoZchallenge2014 partner Chad Clark posted a short story on this very topic today.

I spend the majority of my waking hours at night, so much so that I half the time I’m not sure about the actual day of the week. Like now, is it still Wednesday? Or is it maybe Thursday? Or even Friday? I’m hoping Wednesday, so that I’m actually posting my “N” on the right day. But then again… in some parts of the world, it’s not yet Tuesday, while in other parts of the world, it’s already Friday.

Or perhaps I’m making that up.

And anywho, I digress.

I’m a night owl. Always have been, always will be. It’s rare for me to even be able to go to sleep before midnight, unless I’m taking a nap, and said nap has to start before 4pm, but grownups don’t get to take those often enough. Kindergartners don’t know how good they’ve got it.

I come by this tendency to be awake in the middle of the night quite honestly. I’ve always known that I learned to crochet (back to “needlework”, hurrah!) when I was five years old. But I only recently was reminded by my mother that I learned because… my dad was also a night owl, and he liked to go visiting people late at night, and the person who taught me to crochet did so in order to give me something to do. At 2am.

Of course, a lot of people in my past never quite understood (or accepted) my tendency to sleep late and stay up late. But I’m just not a morning person, and nothing you can say or do will change that fact. So yeah, maybe you’ve been up for five hours before I’ve cracked an eyelid. Likely I’ll be awake for five hours after you’ve gone to bed. Deal with it.

My theory is that I’m descended from the watchmen of the tribes. Back in the long-ago, before all this technology – when *fire* was the new big thing – someone had to stand guard at night and protect the other men, women, and children in the tribe. So much of what we humans do today is hard-coded into our DNA from way back then, why not being a person who functions better at night than during the day? Why can’t I be, instead of watcher-of-the-tribe, a night-writer/reader/etc.? Maybe all “insomniacs” really just need jobs that start at 7pm.

I like the night. It’s quiet. I can think then (well, right now, as I type this). No construction noises, very little traffic noise, no people… The house settles and feels contemplative. In the city, all the colorful lights are exciting and fun, guiding me from one thing to the next.

At night, I can see the moon and the stars. I can look into the sky and think of my grandfather, who was a meteorologist and showed me the constellations. Plus, I can look up and see what feels like the whole of God’s creation reflected up there.  It was even better when we lived in Arkansas – no light pollution to drown out the stars. We could even see the edges of the Milky Way.

And there are a million songs written about the nighttime. A quick search through my iTunes library shows me about 100 results in all kinds of genres, including All Through the Night by Cyndi Lauper, Saturday Night’s Alright by Nickelback, and one of my very favorites, Marc Cohn’s Don’t Talk to Her At Night.

So, that’s my N. And my night. And my blog post about it. Come back sometime tomorrow; I’ll bring you a perfectly interesting topic that starts with the letter O.