I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Nocturnal Mind’s tagline: “Stories Never Sleep,” and I’ve been regretting it. I’ve been debating changing it, even with the grueling task of finding all the little places I’ve put it (even buried deep within the coding) on the website and removing them. The words just don’t seem to fit the message I want to convey anymore—for a variety of reasons.
I first dreamt them up while looking back on my childhood and adolescence, being an imaginative kiddo prone to invasive (most often negative) thoughts caused by chronic overthinking. Often, I would lie awake at night, unable to sleep, staring out my window and dreaming of impossible things waiting for me just over the horizon. Usually, the only cure for my restlessness was to ground myself in a story. Sometimes I did this by watching TV, more often I did this through reading a good book. But especially in the middle of the night, when the rest of the house was already (I’m assuming) asleep, it was easier to ground myself in a story that was taking place in my head.
Which is why the phrase made so much sense to me when I was putting my website together: stories were what I turned to in the dark of night to help myself relax and hold on to the possibility of better things. Stories were alive, and they were flickering all around me like the stars overhead. They were out there, always, just waiting to be told.
But from a business standpoint? In hindsight, it makes no sense. Stories Never Sleep? To the outside observer, what does that even mean? It’s not exactly a phrase that holds high search engine optimization. And as a publishing house, we sleep all the time! We slept through almost all of 2022, we sleep through every summer, we sleep through every holiday season, and we’ve already slept through a good portion of 2025 so far. Stories Never Sleep? Please.
But recently, I have also been thinking a lot about the world at large. I’ve been thinking about misinformation. I’ve been thinking about daily news. About clickbait. About AI. About this strange time we live in, when I feel like I can no longer even trust the things I see and hear because the information behind it is so distorted by media and politicians and bots. And I’ve been thinking about how I can get past all of that. How I can help others get past all of that. And most often, I have felt the need to make some dramatic, grandiose statement that will surely make the world see the truth that is still there, resting at the heart of things.
And then it hit me: that’s what a story is. What a real, genuine story—the biggest outlet for human connection and communication since the dawn of our existence—is. It’s not one single, dramatic, grandiose statement or action that will immediately change the perspectives of the masses; it’s the simple, straightforward truth that is already there, resting at the heart of things, whether people see it or not. And today especially, I can see it flickering all around me, like the stars overhead.
No, stories never sleep because they are always there. You can find them in the days of the tired cashier, who fakes a discount on an item that someone in need couldn’t afford to pay for; you can find them in the life of the therapist, who sees discomfort and unhappiness every day and strives to make it better, in spite of their own problems; you can find them in the struggle of a flower bursting through a crack in the concrete and reaching toward the sun.
We are all stories. Life itself is one big story with no end, whether we are lying awake in the dark of night, acknowledging it, or fast asleep and drooling onto our pillow.
To make a short story long, as is my habit, I think I’m going to keep the tagline after all. Maybe the rest of the world won’t get what it means, but I will. And anyone who reads this blog post will. And anyone who has ever lain awake far past their bedtime, gazing out their window at the night sky, will.
And that’s all that matters, in the end.
