The Night Owl
February 15th, 2008

10 A.M.

(Groan) “Oh God, I’m exhausted. I swear, I’ll never stay up late again."

6 P.M.

“Damn, I can barely keep my eyes open. I can’t wait to go to sleep in a few hours.”

12 A.M.

“I’m wide fucking awake. Time to do stuff.”

My circadian rhythm is an asshole. It certainly doesn’t think much of society’s established norm of a 9 to 5 workday. As a result, here I am once again full of life at the stroke of midnight only to be dead to the world during tomorrow’s daylight hours.

With all this energy, the world is my oyster, or at least, my house is. From straightening up, to catching up on reading, to completing a side project, there’s so much I could get done.

Unfortunately, that won’t happen if television has something to say about it, and it always does.

“Come watch me,” the television says, “I have lots of good shows on.”

I know it’s lying, but it doesn’t matter. Laziness wins another battle over me. It’s a constant struggle for the night owl. I flick through the channels in vain for something worth watching. Right now, it’s a toss up between a repeat of the evening news, the west coast sports game still in progress, or the long-forgotten sitcom from 1983.

I decide to go with the sports game. It’s pleasant to look at and completely mindless, both important qualities I look for in my television programming.

An hour later, the game ends and I break out of my trance-like state. I quickly turn off the TV before it can get me hooked on anything else. My work ethic has awoken and is fighting the laziness within me.

On my shelf, I spot a book I have been wanting to read for some time, but kept putting off. I decide to put an end to that immediately. But before I can get to it, the computer catches my eye. It gives me a seductive stare.

“Fuck that book,” the computer slyly says, “Come surf the web, you know you want to.”

That computer is a son of a bitch. It just loves to waste my time. Tonight, however, I’m determined not to let that happen. To hell with that computer. In fact, I’m going into the other room to get away from it.

“I’ve got porn….tons of it…most of it free….some of it good….you just need to know where to look…it’s not that hard…just a few precise search engine queries…”

Damn, that computer knows my weakness. As my will power crumbles, I work out a compromise. I’ll quickly rub one out online, but after that, I’m getting something accomplished, no excuses.

Five minutes of porn and thirty other random websites later, I log off the computer, having wasted another precious hour of life.

All that time in front of a screen has made my eyes tired, so I crawl into bed. I lay down, hoping for peaceful slumber to arrive, but it doesn’t come. My mind is still alive with activity, refusing to take a rest.

“Damn it, brain! Stop thinking about stuff!”

I climb back out of bed, half-disgusted with myself. At least now, there’s nothing left to distract me. I grab the book and head downstairs to my living room sofa.

At last, I’m actually reading the book. With every passing page, I grow more captivated by its content, feeling both entertained and enlightened. Ultimately, that’s what I love about being awake at this hour, there is nothing to distract me, besides myself. If you ask me, the world is a much nicer, more peaceful place between midnight and six in the morning, at least in my time zone. When I manage to focus on a task at this time of day, nothing can stop me.

The experience makes me realize all the more what a terrible waste laziness can really be. One would think that I’d learn my lesson, but I won’t.

“Who am I kidding? Laziness is fun.”

The more I think about it, circadian rhythms aren’t the real problem. It’s our overall bodies that suck. Requiring seven to nine hours of sleep for optimal functioning is bullshit. Two should be enough. Then again, if we had all that extra energy, working 16 hour days would probably become a normal occurrence. I wouldn’t put it past some of our more evil entrepreneurs.

There’s more that I could say about the subject, but I grow quite weary. I’m going to bed.

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- 2.15.2008

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