I tend to go to bed late most nights, 2 or 3 am. My nightly routine involves piling the boudoir-esque pile of pillows into various precarious arrangements. I place my phone underneath the tower of pillows and close the blinds to create a dark environment condusive to satisfying slumber. Perhaps three minutes later I get out of bed and open the blinds, filled with romantic notions of allowing the moonlight to seep through. I get back into a bed bathed in the dirty yellow light of the hospital complex I live in. Decide I can't be bothered to get out of bed again. I drink my tea, conveniently located at the side of the bed, and invariably stone cold. I stare at the ceiling, and wonder if the ever-increasing crack is indicative of some serious underlying structural damage, and would I get special consideration for finals if the ceiling were to fall in. I listen to smooth relaxing music to slow the treadmill in my mind, gradually drifting off. Until of course I am rudely brought back to consciousness by the obscure trance remixes of Scottish folk music churned out by the shuffle feature of Windows Media Player
(how does that work anyway? I can listen to music for pleasant hours during the day, yet it is only in the twilight hours my hard drive decides to regurgitate German hardcore house music. How did it even get on my computer in the first place? The moral of the story, don't mindlessly copy music from your friends' computers.) I turn off the music, providing my own soundtrack of particularly imaginative expletives. The cycle complete I think about the many things I need to achieve tomorrow, and promptly fall into a coma-sleep.
Well that's what usually happens. I've been having trouble sleeping lately. There's nothing so frustrating as insomnia brought on by wallowing in self-pity, triggered by rampant self-indulgence, a consequence of wanton procrastination, possibly magnified by the recent full moon.
I'm not a morning person. I grudgingly wake at 8 am when the alarm clock briefly sounds before I hit the snooze button for another delicious nine minutes of uninterrupted bliss. It's klaxon-like tones blare again and I viciously strike it, my dyspraxic hand randomly pressing buttons. Eighteen minutes gone. It hisses at me once again time and I slap it down, challenging it to dare defy me again. After all, who's in charge here? I can go on for hours this way.
A variable amount of time later (usually when one of my more conscious flatmates have threatened me with physical violence if I don't get up)I manage to swing my feet out from the comforting shelter of my quilt and onto the floor. As I kick over the stagnating remnants of yesterday's tea I am generally groggy, disoriented, bleary-eyed, and unprepared for sunshine. For the sake of variety I've lately been spicing the morning with a double dose of self-pity as I skillfully avoid the mirror.
However late I am for that morning's commitments, I still end up waffing about my room. Despite my mostly ridiculous good fortune in life, of late I've still managed to feel a small lingering hang-over of bitterness and resentment at the nocturnally identified perceived inequities in my life. Disgusting isn't it? I despise that behaviour in other people, and as with addiction, isn't recognising you have a problem the first step towards change. Well another one of my many, many character flaws, as identified by many, is wilful impatience, so I think I'll just skip to the conclusion of that process, and pull myself together. I will regain some sense of perspective and in the words of every Aunty-ji, "it could be worse".
