I’ve decided that I’m not an insomniac. I just keep really odd hours.

I don’t know why but I can’t seem to get it together to get anything done during the day. I’m not sure when all of this started. Late night gigs are probably what pushed me over the edge. Initially, I had to work a day job to get my projects off the ground. Sometimes it was more than one job. Finding my voice creatively was so important that sleep was a luxury, a catch-it-when-you-can situation. I knew that nothing would give me my individual creative self, strong and self-assured and capable. In doing the things that I was doing artistically—and I was doing a little of everything—who I was would eventually surface and the work that I was creating and developing on my own would take on this whole other dynamic. So I kept doing it. The jobs came and went, the art I made got better and better and the next thing I knew, I had not only finished school but I was a bona fide card carrying professional, with a union and insurance and a pension and everything. It was a conventional moment in a very unconventional life. Things shifted to accommodate my life. The next thing I knew, everything was happening at night.

At first it was simple errands—little things like sending mail from the 24 hour post office at 31St. St. and 8th Ave. Then there I was, sipping guava juice and watching South American soap operas on Telemundo in an empty 24 hour Laundromat up the street from my house, waiting for my sheets to dry. After awhile, I was grocery shopping so much at the late night Fairway, my favorite cashier knew me by name. A few weeks ago when I couldn’t sleep, I went bowling.

I’m not talking about going out until 4am on a Friday night. Actually, I hardly ever go out on the weekends. I don’t even bother going to the Lower East Side anymore and the West Village was never an option. It looks like a trendy urban theme park/strip mall, filled with all these fashion victims who are living out some Sex and the City fantasy about what New York City is. Everyone is trying to outhip each other. (Williamsburg is way, way worse.) I avoid all that by going out early in the week until the wee hours of the morning. I usually stay uptown. And I have an absolute blast.

I used to think, this is some phase I’m going through. Now I don’t want it to end. It’s just too convenient. Sometimes I go to Little Korea to nosh. Bowling is always an option but I’m thinking seriously about taking up golf. There’s no congestion. No lines to stand in, ever. No one to squeeze past me with their cart in the grocery store. No traffic. Everyone’s very chatty. It’s like a small town. Even in my neighborhood, the streets clear out, somewhat. It’s the natural order of things. All those children, up well past midnight, constantly trying to outscream each other—you know it’s late when they’re not around. The thugs have to go to sleep, eventually. So do crackheads, no matter how cranked they look. (How can you tweak and sleep?) Still, the little Dominican restaurant-on-wheels up the street from me does a brisk business at night. Everything slows down a little, but it doesn’t stop.

And if I want to stay in to get things done, I can always do my art in peace.