On Irregular Schedules

I'm sold on the idea of living on an irregular sleeping schedule. Granted, it would be extremely detrimental to my health for me to stay awake all night on a regular basis, and horribly detrimental to my grades to boot; but there's something about experiencing the two different sorts of mental states that can be achieved by way of alternating between different sleep schedules that seems somehow beneficial. The sort of mental state that I get in after being awake all night is interesting. It still seems motivated by that perpetual sense of restlessness that underlies virtually everything I do; but that restlessness reaches the forefront of my mind: Not in a stressful, urgent way as it does when I've had too much coffee, but in a calm, conscious, and decisive way. It presents ideas of great importance to me - ideas about my future, and my goals, and my wants - and lets me look at them in a systematic and accepting manner. During the day, when I've slept at normal hours, these pressing matter are just that: pressing. They want to be given my full attention, but my attention is focused on hours and schedules and the process of allotting increments of time to the process of getting to various locations on time, or leaving on time, or gauging my energy levels and gauging the amount of coffee that will wake me up just enough to put me in a state of mind conducive to schoolwork but not conducive to overactive mental activity and the susceptibility to distraction that it tends to result in.

Staying up all night on weekends allows me to devote time to the things that have been waiting in line all week for their time in the spotlight of my thoughts, after having stood there and having to be told again and again, "No, hold on; wait just a little while longer. Hold that thought." If I don't spend time thinking about those thoughts - the line-waiting kind - they'll forget why they were waiting around in the first place and wander off. I've had thoughts leave me, and I think some of them are never going to come back. There were some that I was sorry to see go: I saw them, standing in line, and I thought, "Oh, I look forward to having the time to give that one a moment to tell me what it's all about." And then I was distracted by an assignment or a book or a meal or a friend and before I knew it, that thought had abandoned me. Something can be glimpsed and gleaned by just seeing it waiting there, but what's glimpsed is just a fraction of its substance, and doesn't amount to much. It's like the faint outline of someone's face from the obituaries page of the newspaper, stamped onto silly putty and bent and stretched. It's a distortion of an impression of an impression of the man himself. And arguably the man himself is an impression of himself, or an impression of his parents, or an impression of his surroundings, or an impression of his biological composition. If I had it my way, I'd pause whatever class I was taking notes in when I glimpsed a particularly eager thought standing there in line, and I'd pull him aside and say, "Alright, hey. You. Lay it on me. Tell me what you're all about." But instead I find myself giving him a look of annoyance - a look of warning - and shooing him away and out of my periphery, telling him in one look that he's being distracting and that his incessant presence is making it difficult to focus on the matter at hand.

The matter at hand might not be the matter that is supposed to be at hand, and some of the most interesting thoughts come when one is being exposed to a slew of other interesting thoughts, which is really quite annoying because none of said thoughts are able to be given adequate attention as a result. I suppose that's alright, because the ones that matter resurface in some manner or other at some point along the line, or so I hope.

The worst part of odd sleep-schedules is the adjustment at the beginning of a new week. Peace of mind and introspection and speculation gained from quiet hours of thought and pondering are almost counteracted by the mental retardation and vocabulary-looting properties of sleep debt. Little can be retained or learned or cognized when the brain hasn't rested itself, and any amount of eagerness on the part of the will cannot make up for this. And so, I suppose I should designate Friday and Saturday nights as insomnia nights, and try to connote some degree of normalcy to the rest.

There's something about taking that time out from society - not in terms of one's activities, but in terms of one's schedule - that is nice, too. Knowing that you're awake, thinking, or reading, or working, for YOURSELF, and for the sake of thought itself, and not for anyone else - and in fact knowing that your being awake is at odds with the rest of the world other than yourself (and the authors to which you are devoting your time and attention) somehow claims that time and those thoughts as your own, and somehow puts a bit more stock in the ideas contrived because they are contrived out of the will to contrive itself; and because they are manifested in the defiance of some other kind of established manifestation (that is, society and the structure of society, and the structure of time and days and hours themselves). They are somehow stronger in their presence; more likely to last beyond their moment, and sometimes prone to lingering on, sometimes for days, stretching their influence out over the normally-demarcated hours of the weekdays to follow.