Conversations with My Night Brain

Chris: Welcome to Conversations with
My Night Brain, with Chris Enns.

I'm Chris Enns.

Funny enough how that works.

This is another little test of the podcast
format as I mash and mold and try and

figure out what this thing is gonna be.

You can't see my hands, but I'm
actually doing the like, play-doh

e mashing and molding thing, even
though there's nothing in them.

For this episode

I'm gonna try, uh, podcasting, mouth
blogging as the Shop talk show guys

call it, uh, mouth blogging a blog
that I already wrote and published.

As some of you have probably picked up
from my writing, and even in this podcast

if you're listening along somewhere,
there's just some church drama and

stuff in our life, and I won't go into
deeper detail about that right now.

But, uh, suffice to say, often,
less so lately, but often, the night

brain attacks are around and related
to the church drama in our life.

And so what follows is
what I wrote at 4:00 AM.

And then refined later that day when
I was awake with coffee and posted on

my little blog over at chrisenns.com.

But I had the thought of doing a
audio version of it sometimes not for

every blog post, but just sometimes.

And so then a natural way would be to
embed a, player obviously is for the audio

and I really like Transistors, uh, audio
embed player for the podcast episodes.

And so then I thought, why not throw
it into something on Transistor,

which would lead to this podcast,
which maybe then would also be down

the road, uh, sort of crossovers
between like a blog post that I write.

Then I would also do
an audio version of it.

Or maybe there'd be an audio thing
that I would write a blog post of.

So just as a way of
having a thing to test.

That's what this episode is.

So thanks for listening along.

Here we go.

The post was entitled Night Brain
Dreams, posted May 18th, 2023.

According to my blog CMS thing,
it says it's a three minute read.

I guess this'll be a good test of that.

I had a dream last night about being
at a church meeting of some sort.

Groups of people sitting at the same round
tables that have been in use for decades.

Built to last.

It was the lounge, but
it wasn't the lounge.

There's some familiar faces,
but in that dream way where you

don't see anyone specific, but
somehow you know they're there.

Someone I trusted was sitting at a
table and I went to sit near him.

Various people in
leadership wandering around.

They avoided making eye contact with me.

It was like we were all waiting for
a bigger group meeting to start.

At some point, the person I trusted left
without me realizing, and there wasn't

anyone left that I felt safe with.

Internally, I panicked.

I made a plan to leave the room,
got up and walked out into another

space and sat down there to wait.

For someone safe?

For something to happen?

I'm not sure.

I just remember hoping that
nobody unsafe would come by.

Then I woke up.

I was left with that mix
of post dream emotions.

Sad, hungry, hungry, not
hungry, angry, maybe hangry?

Hurt, empty.

And then the words my youngest said to me
during our bedtime routine earlier that

night started playing back in my head.

When Grandpa died, everything changed.

Thanks to name withheld.

I don't get to see my friends anymore.

Thanks for that night.

brain.

4:00 AM thoughts like
this are really helpful.

The next stop my night brain took
me to was this image of our kids

letting themselves into the main
office area to go to what was Sue,

my wife's, office, to hang out with
friends after church on a Sunday.

It was a safe place.

A place they thought they could
relax in, be comfortable in, and feel

a part of things by proxy because
their mom worked at this church.

What I've taken to calling conversations
with my night brain aren't as frequent

as they were a few months ago.

But it doesn't take much to trigger them.

A side comment about
something fairly unrelated.

An Instagram post with a face I
used to see on a regular basis.

Someone asking me to play guitar.

One of our kids missing some
part of our former life.

Whatever it is, something kicks
a pebble in my brain, and a whole

bunch of rocks come tumbling down.

It's often during these times that
the lyrics to the U2 song, The Little

Things That Give You Away, the bridge
in particular, try to help me make

some emotional sense of it all.

Sometimes the air is so anxious.

All my thoughts are so reckless,
and all my innocence has died.

Sometimes I wake at four in the
morning, where all the darkness is

swarming, and it covers me in fear.

Sometimes I'm full of anger and
grieving so far away from believing

that any song will reappear.

Sometimes the end is not coming.

It's not coming.

The end is here.

Sometimes.

All right, that's the end of the,
uh, reading of the blog post.

If you're hearing this somewhere, somehow,
some way and are able to give me feedback

on whether you think this is a good idea
or a bad idea, stick to blog posts, stick

to podcasts, or stick to none of it.

I welcome your feedback.

As always, this has been an
episode of Conversations with

My Night Brain with Chris Enns.

Thanks for listening.

Have a great day.

Bye.