🔐Behind the Blog: When the Muse Refuses to Let You Sleep

My recent blog on Black Queer Contributions to LGBTQ Rights and Liberation didn’t arrive during a planning session. It showed up while I was in bed, lights off, brain very much trying to rest.

I was thinking about Black History Month, about how I wanted to honor it in a way that actually made sense for Queer and Unbroken. Not a surface level acknowledgment. Not something rushed or symbolic. Something true to the work I’ve already been doing.

And then it clicked.

Last October, during LGBTQIA+ History Month, I wrote a lot about Black queer people. As I thought back through those pieces, a pattern became impossible to ignore. Again and again, Black queer people were at the center of the story. Organizing. Building. Speaking truth. Carrying risk. Holding communities together, often without credit or protection.

Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. And once I couldn’t unsee it, I knew this article needed to exist.

This is usually how it goes for me. My muse does not believe in bedtime. She prefers 2am. She likes to nudge, then poke, then fully shake me awake until I either start writing or accept that sleep is not happening tonight. It’s equal parts annoying and sacred. I’ve learned that resisting her just makes things worse.

What I appreciate about working this way, even when I’m tired, is that the work comes from recognition rather than obligation. This article wasn’t born out of a content calendar or a sense of what I “should” publish. It came from noticing something quietly true and feeling a responsibility to name it with care.

Behind the scenes, that’s often what Queer and Unbroken looks like. Threads connecting across months. Ideas that wait until the timing feels right. Pieces that emerge because they want to be written, not because they were assigned a slot.

If you’re someone who depends on your own muse, you probably know this feeling. The moment when an idea won’t leave you alone. When it follows you into sleep and back out again. When writing feels less like a task and more like listening.

This article asked to be written. I’m glad I listened, even if it cost me a little rest.

If your muse woke you up recently too, I see you.