I woke up early before the alarm went off. I stopped it before it could ring, then thought about setting it for later and the next last chunk of sleep I had to decide on, whether or not, the bed was so warm and seductively snug. My internal clock woke me up. I lay there in idle thought, and let my mind loose to wander.

What is the mechanism of my internal clock? How does it work? How does it know? These are questions I can’t answer. I don’t know enough of the secrets of biology, and physics, and psychology, and any other ology that might be involved. And I decided in my ignorance that maybe I didn’t really need to know how, though that need to know tempted and tantalized me, but maybe what is is enough, as my lazy mind rambled. I remembered how when I was young I used to set my mind a subject for the dream I intended to pursue when I was asleep, maybe a problem I couldn’t resolve awake, and then in the morning waking up see where I was, how far I got toward an answer, and sometimes I actually had solved it and surprised myself, because the mind keeps working while the body rests, at least sometimes it does. Sleeping you can do things you can’t when you’re awake.

But it doesn’t always work. There are problems I can’t solve in my sleep. I know that, learned that, and had to teach myself to not stay asleep, but wake up where things mattered and were real.

I’m still learning the things worth knowing. I’m learning to keep my sleeping mind awake.

You can too.