I wrote this for a creative writing class years ago in high school, and didn't do much revising. It's strange to see how stories can always resurface and still make you smile and how much your writing can change over time.

black-billed magpie

I have never met anyone who likes magpies. I don't understand why they don't like them, but when I think about it all I can come up with is one thing. They're noisy and therefore people think they don't appreciate or respect humans.
Yet, so are young children and T.V. screens, but people don't hate, can't hate those.
Perhaps it's because of my past experience with a magpie that has them on my good side.
One day, many years ago, my mother dropped me off somewhere for a meeting. Unfortunately, the meeting had been moved somewhere else and we had forgot. I ran back to catch my mom before she left, but it was too late. Being such a beautiful day outside I decided to sit on some concrete circular artwork and wait for her. As I sat I heard rustling up in a nearby tree.
It was a magpie! He bounced about in the tree for a bit before he hopped down onto the concrete circle I was sitting on. Then, the most incredible thing happened- he hopped all around me, but never bothered me in particular. He was quiet the whole time too.
I still remember that incident when people think magpies are horrible. It reminds me that magpies can be on e of the sweetest creatures on earth.

Sleeping

My own thoughts. I often find that I am lying in bed, ready to fall asleep, but am wide awake-thinking of what I'm going to do the next day, going over something that had happened that day, or even thinking long into the future and really almost daydreaming. I start planning out my life if it were to go as perfectly as I want it. If I am looking forward to something I will go over it again and again in my head. Case in point, meeting up with a friend I haven't seen in months kept me up until probably 4am when I had to wake up at 8am (early for a college student!) to get ready to meet them. Or that one time I started going insane late at night and ended up writing a love song to Wilma Flintstone. I wish I had written it down, it was pretty good, the one to Jane Jetson was just okay.

No matter what I do, like try to clear my mind, tell myself to stop thinking about it, put in headphones and listen to music, nothing works. I stay up for hours with my brain not being able to shut off. Some of those things even hinder.

I find if I listen to music just before going to bed that I am all hyped up on the music. It's a way to try and relax, and if I feel in the dancing mood a way to burn some calories consumed during the day, but it always seems to make me more awake than I was before turning on my iPod. Even though I know the music will make it so I can't fall asleep, I still listen to it. I can't help it, I love music. Then there is the music that can actually lull me to sleep, which I try to listen to while letting my head hit the pillow. But sometimes even after listening to the soothing music I still can't fall asleep.

Home for me is in The Land of the Midnight Sun, which is a really accurate nickname, and therefore it can be hard to fall asleep. It can be 1am and look like it's 5pm outside. In some parts of the state, some people even put tin foil over their windows to block the sun in the summer nights, I just have an extra sheet thrown over my curtain rod helping my seemingly useless curtains. The light shining the in the window does nothing to help me fall asleep at night, and during the winter the cold, pitch black silence of the night is almost so creepy you don't want to fall asleep.

It's times like these, the longs nights where nothing I do can put me to sleep, that I usually find writing helps. I turn to writing when I get the big urge to put something on paper, or on monitor in this day and age, and when I can't seem to stop stirring. I suppose this should help me be a Creative Writing major, although the last thing I wrote during one of these late-at-night sessions was frowned upon by the class I shared it with, but oh well. These things happen. It's not like it will keep me up at night that someone doesn't like something I did. Or will it?

In the end, though, it's my thoughts that keep me up and seem to give me the twitchy nerves that make me want to do something, whether listen to music, dance, or stretch that writing muscle. If only I could turn my brain off I would be able to get some of that much needed REM, but alas no luck. Actually, I should probably be good now, let's see, it's late, I've listened to music, and am writing...bed time! Hopefully.