What I Think About When I Cannot Sleep
Ramblings of a Restless Mind
This book is currently in edit and will be released when complete.
This book was written in the hours when the world goes quiet but the mind does not.
When sleep refuses to arrive, something shifts. The usual structures of the day fall away. Urgency softens. Thoughts wander without agenda. Memory, curiosity, regret, wonder, and odd associations drift to the surface, unguarded.
These essays grew out of those hours.
They were not written to solve insomnia. They were written because wakefulness has its own texture, its own honesty, and its own way of revealing what matters.
Thinking After Midnight
Night thinking is different.
It is less strategic and more sincere. The mind stops performing and starts noticing. Questions that felt trivial during the day return with weight. Old memories resurface. Small details expand. Large certainties shrink.
In the dark, thought loses its armour.
What I Think About When I Cannot Sleep follows that kind of thinking. It moves through science, philosophy, memory, technology, art, time, and fragility without trying to impose order too quickly. Some essays circle an idea. Others stop abruptly. Many change direction halfway through.
That is not a flaw.
It is the point.
Where the Mind Goes When the World Stops Talking
These essays explore what the mind does when there is no distraction to lean on.
A half remembered conversation becomes a question about truth.
A passing worry opens into a reflection on control.
A sleepless hour turns into a meditation on time, ageing, or the quiet mechanics of the body.
The tone is reflective, sometimes amused, sometimes serious, occasionally unsettled. The night does not care for conclusions.
Science and Wonder in a Quieter Key
The book draws on biology, psychology, physics, and philosophy, but never academically. Ideas appear as companions to thought rather than as arguments to be won.
A reflection on sleep may drift into neuroscience. A thought about memory may touch cosmology. A worry about the future may dissolve into something gentler and more precise.
Wonder here is not mystical. It is observational. It comes from looking closely at how things actually work when there is time to notice them.
Not a Guide, Not a Cure
This is not a sleep book.
It does not offer techniques, routines, or advice. It does not promise better nights or faster rest. It accepts wakefulness as part of being human and treats it as a different mode of consciousness rather than a problem to fix.
The essays are meant to be read the way they were written. Slowly. At odd hours. In any order. With permission to stop mid sentence and stare at the ceiling for a while.
A Book for the Awake
This book is for readers who recognise the strange clarity of sleepless nights.
For those who think more honestly when no one is watching.
For people who have learned that not all valuable thinking happens during office hours.
If the Manuals of Life help you shape your days, and What I Think About When I Walk with Bess keeps you company while moving, What I Think About When I Cannot Sleep sits with you when nothing moves at all.
It does not rush you back to sleep.
It keeps you company while you are awake.