On Late-Night Inspiration
My sleep schedule, like that of many other people my age, is severely out of whack. I consistently go to sleep in the early hours of the morning and struggle to wake up before noon. I would argue that such a schedule isn’t any inferior for it, but just different, and that the morning is a severely overrated time anyway. Not to mention that this difference is one not borne out of any ill will, and isn’t something that one can easily be snapped out of, either. The real cause is simple – biology. My circadian rhythm shifted several years ago and has conveniently gone quiet since. But all this isn’t what this entry is really about. This has just been a minor defence lodged for something that has admittedly been an inconvenient staple in my life. What I’m really here to talk about, though, is the few hours before I go to sleep.
A justification I cannot offer is that that time is put to good use. I can normally rationalise watching as much inane content as I do for the purpose of broadening my understanding of media as a whole, but those few hours before I sleep consist, usually, of YouTube videos. So many, and, as I mentioned in yesterday’s entry, at 2x speed. I really can’t overstate the volume I consume. There are channels, like Some More News or Nathaniel Drew, where I can feel good about myself for watching sometimes, but they are very much exceptions to the rule. It is in these hours though, that I tend to sway from my comfort content, and go down rabbit holes. I will watch two hours’ worth of videos about language learning or reading comic books and be filled with such an intense motivation to devote large portions of my time to do those things.
Spoiler alert: I don’t. Sure, I’ve upheld my Duolingo streak for three years now for reasons I can’t fully articulate, and I really enjoy (in some forms) the process of learning a language, but I never take action. I really wish I could blame procrastination for this, and while it no doubt plays a small part, it boils down to something far simpler. The inspiration, that deep motivation dissipates, and I am left only with the faint memory, the ghost of a desire. It’s a shame for several reasons. The first is that this unfortunate reaction isn’t unique to this late-night example, and knowing that inspiration is a fleeting force in my mind isn’t encouraging when there are things I actually want to do.
I’ll be honest: there were more reasons, but I can’t remember what they were. I’m not going to cheapen the piece (lol) by stumbling and bullshitting my way through fake reasons. This has honestly kind of derailed how I saw myself ending this entry, but it might be a good lesson. I get very easily distracted, and it’s not always possible to enter the same frame of thinking I previously inhabited. I don’t see this being as high stakes enough for it to matter too much, but that is, perhaps, another thing to spend some time working on – maintaining focus or proper recovery for when it is lost.