A Night Owl's Musings in the Sun

The Confused Night Owl
image courtesy of clipartof.com

I don’t know what to do when the sun’s up.

Today I woke up half an hour past five AM. Usually at this hour, my body clock would tell me I should get some shut eye or I should be very sleepy which will indicate that, at the very least, I would be off to dreamland soon. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling to keep my body clock in order—to have a normal, constant bed time and consequently a rather expectant time to wake up. But sleep always eludes me. Eversince I’ve worked the night shift from my previous job, I had never been often awake to see the sunrise or watch the morning news. Lord knows I wanted to change that. I’ve manipulated my sleeping patterns, the time I go to bed, even my bed itself so that I can have a normal bedtime like everybody else. As much as I want to maintain order in this aspect, I simply can’t. I maybe suffering clinically from a sleep disorder for all I know but I could never sleep at night. I always sleep when the sun’s up and wake up when it’s dark. So overtime, I’ve come to accept that I’m a night person and I eventually embraced that. Waking up at night seems to be part of who I am.

But today’s different. I finally managed to wake up in the morning.



Yesterday saw the beginning of my attempt to become a gamer. Wait, scratch that: a frustrated gamer that is. My sister gave me a PS3 console for my birthday which has been rotting away since I lack the necessary hand-eye coordination skills and the patience to get through most of the gameplay (Resistance 2 and Infamous). Instead of letting an expensive piece of equipment rust in my room, I decided to try it out. Aside from the anxiety of not getting a trophy after almost six hours of playing, I managed to have fun. So little did I know that it was already evening and I’ve been awake for almost 24 hours.

Waking up early today, I wanted to jump for joy since for the first time in few weeks since I can consider myself a “normal” person again. Eating a bowl of cereal as your breakfast in the morning definitely felt right as opposed to eating them, say at 11:00 PM. But after that, what’s next? Have I been out from the sun for so long that I’ve forgotten how to function in the morning?

I love waking up at night. I love how it’s dark and everyone’s asleep while I’m all pumped up. With the quiet and calm of the surroundings (aside from an occasional neighbourhood dog bark or two), I can always focus on what I need to do - which is basically nothing. There’s always something in the night that brings the thinker in me. How I can mull over certain things like politics, philosophies, sex, my apparent lack of relationship abilities, to the most mundane of things like the shows on TV and the latest news on Korean pop stars. Thinking about these things usually happen at night for me.

The problem is that I don’t know what exactly to do in the morning and that I’ve forgotten the concept of morning activities. For one, my online friends are probably asleep by now since they’re also night-owls like me. Second, I could watch TV but the shows I usually love air at night. I can probably go out and take a walk while the sun’s up but I remember how I dislike UV rays. Or I could do what I usually do at night, lie in my bed and stare at the ceiling while I think about almost anything and everything, but that won’t feel right since such musings for me are reserved in the dark. When I do that at night, there’s less risk of being called a lazy-ass, since I can always make an excuse that instead of doing hoops and being loud I prefer to lie in bed and do nothing so as to not wake other people. I don’t have that luxury during the day. What would you say if you see someone lying in bed and doing nothing while the rest of the world is fully-animated?

People might say that pining on these things is way too trivial, even pointless. That there are a lot of things to worry about in this world that we’re living in like war and anarchy than a possible daylight itinerary, but this is important to my world. Besides, while the world is full of diplomats, scientists, activists and politicians who are out to solve the world’s bigger problem, somebody has to obsess about lesser, trivial stuff. So here I am obsessing on what to do today, while this stupid sun is up (well not necessarily “stupid” as the sun makes life on Earth possible, but you get what I mean.)

After ranting senselessly I guess I have no choice but to better begin my day, double entendre, intended.

What to do...what to do...what to do...

What do nocturnal people do when they wake up in the morning? Simple, they go back to sleep and wake up at night.