It’s 10:00 pm and I come across this cosy thought of going to bed and crashing. My day has been long, I have been working, commuting, eating, talking to others, convincing and maybe even arguing. Most of my mind’s energy stores are spent and a subtle feeling of fatigue sets in. I am still looking at my mobile screen which I can look at the next day as well, however, I am contemplating whether I want to sneak into my comforter or stay up a bit longer. And then I feel a sudden sense of reward, a gushing feeling of silent excitement — at the thought of stalling sleep.
It’s 12:00 am and technically it’s the next day, but these two groggy hours have put me in a nice and focused zone, allowing my mind to be more creative, letting me zone into the moment and fully focus on the thing I am looking at. Somehow this mixed bag of FOMO and grogginess has led me to my ultimate creative instinct and has allowed me to do something that I inherently wanted to do, which I wasn’t able to do during my day, but was worried by the thought of it. My retribution against my busy schedule during the day has allowed me to do what I wanted to do all this while. In other words, my bedtime procrastination has been but a revengeful one.
It’s 2:00 am and everyone around my room and apartment is asleep, I am awake, looking at my screen thinking what new can be pursued this time that will make me feel in control. Ultimately, all my actions at night are driven by the eagerness to have everything in control you see — the bills, the plans for saving more money, the plan for tomorrow, the plan to quit the job, the plan to help my loved ones, the plan to be with my parents, a plan to improve my health, and a plan to be…well happy. But each hour does not pass without struggle — the struggle to find that one thing that I believe will help me be the master of my days and the wonderer of my nights. Typically, it starts with a google search, then a couple of YouTube videos and eventually a saddening thought of incompetence, an erroneous thought of being a person incapable of bringing order and control to his life and being someone who is searching for something unknown.
It’s 3:30 am and the devil’s time has passed. After a couple of hours of searching for that perfect thing amidst the chaos of overloaded information I reckon, my mind is fatigued and my body is calling for sleep. With my eyes squinted, I search with immense diligence and pretend to peruse through a new article or a new blog post, hoping to find an answer that I may as well have already. With each word read and each hour passing, I feel less excited about this silent time I have to myself. At the thought of waking up with energy tomorrow, I close out my laptop. Switching the light off feels complaisant and free-falling on my beds feels soothing. Liberating it feels when I, once again, have procrastinated the effort to find an answer to that worrying thought of uncertainty to yet another night and surrender to sleep.
