As winter settles in, quiet moments before sleep bring a swirl of thoughts—brilliant ideas, trivial fragments, and everything in between. Sorting through them is part of how we make sense of ourselves.
the same as in New York, where my daughter lives.
“December-level cold,” the forecast said, and indeed the air had turned sharp.
The autumn leaves outside the train window looked especially vivid.
At night, when I lie down, various thoughts begin to circle.
They are truly a mixture of gems and stones—some worthwhile, others nothing more than scraps.
Some seem promising enough to use for a blog post, while others will disappear the next moment.
Some ideas, once they start, refuse to stop.
Some feel like an extension of a dream.
One method is to keep a notebook by the pillow and jot down whatever good idea arises.
But the one time I tried doing that with my phone, it woke me up instead, and I gave it up.
Perhaps professional writers or scholars can make such habits part of their craft,
but for a pathologist-blogger just trying to get through daily work, sleep takes priority.
And yet, there are nights when even that doesn’t go well.
Is our thinking a treasure heap, or a pile of garbage?
There are ideas that lead to Nobel Prizes, and ideas that lead to crimes.
The boundary is usually clear, but some thoughts sit in a gray zone, hard to classify.
What we encounter in dreams might be one such kind.
In any case, taking time to think deeply is important.
I want to avoid reckless actions and continue to examine each thought carefully,
building them up one by one.
