I'm an insomniac.

I'm also a big, burly, broad-shouldered, bald, bearded, bespectacled, and bicurious bibliophile. I try to be emotionally-intelligent, live by empathy, and hope I leave the world a better place than I found it.

It's my sincere hope that I'm finally asleep by the time you read this, but that's highly unlikely given the data. But if you're up, similarly afflicted, and want to rub brains together for a bit here are three random things I've been fixated on tonight.

I should have been a tattoo artist. If there's one thing I'd change given the advent of time machines, this would be it. I'd move somewhere the beaches are open all year and I'd put ink in people's skin. My hope is that there is in fact a time-line where I pulled that off... I'm probably a better sleeper there too.

I get really excited by big weather events. A blizzard rolling in... Roiling storm clouds pregnant with electricity... Sodium colored dry lightning on a summer night... But by far my favorite are the storms of spring: Taking a constitutional after sunset when the wind is picking up and the new leaves are rustling on branches.

When driving in the dead of night (something I'm wont to do when my head needs clearing) and I find myself approaching some isolated lamp-post I feel deeply lonely. Not at first mind you. First I think: someone must come out here occasionally. But then as I pass the lamp and whatever small structure (because it's always a tiny structure) it illuminates I am struck by the fact no one is here, haven't seen another motorist for miles.

It's a similar sensation to being an insomniac when the house has gone to sleep. Each hour feels more and more isolated. Four AM somehow being the worst and most desolate. By five AM you've literally got to choose if you're going to power through and subsist off Rockstar and Redbull all day.

But if you've read this far, and you need some company, so do I.