There’s an hour of the day that I have always called “genius hour” because I never had a better word for it, and very rarely do I get to explain it to people. Prospective listeners are too tired, preoccupied, or are already asleep. Or perhaps they’re just entirely uninterested… Ok, that is most likely the case. But blogging in public (sounds dirty, doesn’t it?) affords me the imaginary audience I always wish I had, so I guess now I get to indulge before I forget about this idea completely.

I mean, I started this thing so I’d have some notes, right?

Anyway, genius hour is the hour before sleep when the mind is close to moving towards activating its subconscious, which is during sleep. However, instead of spending that time in bed, the owner of this mind decides to push on with activities. This is how to get a hold of genius hour. It’s a perfect time to be creative! A great time to play with words, images, and sounds. It’s a special hour of the day where the brain experiences this kind of drunken playfulness without actually being waterlogged with alcohol (“alcohologged?”).

It kind of bugs me that I can’t even remember the accurate term for the phenomenon. A while back I remember reading about this condition somewhere (some kind of academic journal? an external link from a Wikipedia article?) and I sincerely regret not being able to remember the actual article–and for that matter, where I had read about this weird phenomena hour in the first place. I was not, however, a blogger during that point in my life. So that probably serves me right.

I can personally attest to the virtues of the genius hour. In my “genius hours”, I used to play with code. After all, this is how I got to knowing code in the first place. Of course, I’ve done the other things, like trying to write a song within the hour, trying to create prose or poetry, trying to draw something that I saw in my head. The results of those things are nice, at best, and that is being generous. With code, however, the old dog learns new tricks. The kid in me picks up a new toy. The reckless net surfer finds something worth bookmarking.

So now, in what I feel I am experiencing in the genius hour, I find myself blogging. And what have I found?

A nice little community that seems to be talking directly to me.

I wish I had more time to put into the look and feel of this blog so that I had something presentable for when I eventually try to establish some sort of presence in this community, but as of now it’s kind of… well, just a journal.

And I so badly want to write for it! I’ve spent less time finishing some books than on this blog, and I was a literature major. The issues that get articles are way up there on my priority-slash-curiosity list. But first, I must conjure up enough gusto to keep the blog of my own from going stale.

So, a blog a day it is. From this point forth. If not to better my writing skills, then to at least set forth in finding that damned “voice” my creative writing teachers were talking about.