Diving deep in the moonlight of 3:31 AM

I'm beginning to suspect that the 8-hour sleep theory is one great conspiracy. By not sleeping too much during the night, you free up time to think, but too much time leads to excessive thinking, and it's too easy to fall into an existential crisis.

Between doomscrolling and aimless ASMR TikTok watching, all sorts of thoughts swim through my head. I find myself lamenting whether it's too late to start a writing career, reconcile with my estranged mother, or even muster the energy for a social interaction.

But the beauty of being awake before everyone else is that I'm not in a hurry to get back to bed. If I can stay up until 6 AM, I can venture down to the misty Lido in the -2°C atmosphere, almost like a form of 'Stoßlüften' (German word for ‘shock ventilation’) in the open air swimming pool.

I don't just want to consume all the information in the world, I want to create my own version of a microcosm. Beats in my head urge me to voice out, but I worry about my grammar. Who cares these days? This article will just be a tiny smudge in the corner of a paper, barely making a dent, but it still matters to me. It's like exercise; swimming ten laps may not seem like I've achieved anything, but that sixty minutes of cardio grants me one of the freshest minds of the day.

I keep thinking of a Fitzgerald quote that comforts me and makes me feel better about being thirty-four and still figuring things out:

For what it’s worth... it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.