Sleep Ramble

I wrote this a while ago, but it still seems relevant:

     I just want to write and write and I have all these things to say, but the blank page frightens me.  I’ll get a good sentence going, but then the vast emptiness below the page makes me dizzy and I have to stop.  How could I possibly fill up all that whiteness with meaningful ideas?  Then, just to get myself going, I vomit out any passing thought that floats into my head, and try to squeeze out the void below.  Before I know it, I’ve filled some of that void and it becomes easier.
     Then I reread what I’ve spat out and notice that the word “void” is used too many times perhaps.  And then the part that talks about squeezing out the void doesn’t come across how I wanted it to.  Instead of evoking the idea of squeezing your eyes shut when you’re on a precipice, or some rickety bridge, it sounds like I’m trying to squeeze out the whiteness on the page with my words.  Or maybe it doesn’t, am I being too critical?  Will someone read it the way I wanted them too?  This indecision could cripple a man.  
     Now that two paragraphs have themselves established, I grope for where to proceed.  Should I transition into some story or anecdote (are those the same thing)?  Should I go on about how its past midnight and that I should be sleeping or else I’ll be too tired tomorrow and since its Monday my whole week will be off, just like the last one and the one before that?  Maybe I should just forget the whole thing and go back to bed like I’m supposed to.  But then I’ll toss and turn like I have been for the past hour or so, just to get up and try to write away my angst.  Where does that angst come from?  Is it all the half thought out ideas from the day coming back to haunt me?  Do they cry out with unfinished business that I’m supposed to complete for them?  Or is it all the tasks I’ve not completed, crying out to be accomplished.  Whatever it is, it’s keeping me awake.
     The whole process of falling asleep is a struggle for me.  My body is tired, I recognize that, but for some reason my mind stays awake, in spite of its best interest to rest.  They say it takes the average person twenty minutes to fall asleep.  Twenty minutes!  I’m lucky to fall asleep in under an hour.  I have various tactics for finding a comfortable position, that’s not the problem.  It’s when I find that position that the trouble starts.  I start to hear the activity in my head.  A broken record of some song I heard in passing during the day.  An image of the snow falling lit up brilliantly by the street light.  The lab practical I didn’t study for.  All these things start to blend together and I feel like an actual blender is twirling in my chest and stomach.  This is not a severe sensation, but it’s just enough to make myself uncomfortable.  So I must switch positions and start the search for another comfortable one.  Then the process repeats.
     Now I look back and admire how much of the void has been converted into meaningful ideas.  Then I wonder if the ideas are truly meaningful, or just rambling.  For the moment I’ll take pride in the fact that the void has been converted into ideas, meaningful or otherwise.  At this I start to worry about a new void that is opening up below.  The next page is just around the corner.  But, after tackling the first page, the second will only be easier.   Unless, that is, I don’t venture further.  If I just end it here, I’ll have no more voids to conquer no self doubt or over usage of the word “void”.  No repetition or misspelled words.  I’ll have a complete story, or set of ideas anyway.  I can jump back into bed with the knowledge that a once blank space has been filled up with something of substance.  That might comfort me enough so that I’ll fall asleep.  That is, unless I start to worry if what I’ve just written has gone no where and said nothing.  Then the page would have been better off left blank.  
On turns the blender and the process begins again.