Last week I had my driving test. For the second time, but new round, new opportunities. And if there’s one thing that keeps me awake at night, it’s this. Nights in advance! Then it doesn’t help that the exam was in the morning. A bad night makes a bad morning, and that makes taking exams even less fun.
But anyway: besides bad mornings, sleepless nights also mean awake nights. What do you actually do, with little sleep and (apparently) a lot of time? It is an excellent time for reflection and to sit in your thoughts. To let them wander. New ideas. Are they good?
The other day at 2am I decided to get started and do some writing. I was completely convinced of what such good ideas would be, after all, but they were completely unreadable when I read it back later (during the day!): sentences that ended out of nowhere, thoughts that came out of nowhere (and also out of nowhere stopped). Nothing left to save. In the waste bin.
What do you do during such a sleepless night? A little reading perhaps? I can pay attention to very little. Music becomes hypnotic. Images start dancing. To cook. Yes. Taste. I need that. Making flavors late into the night. Mushrooms, tofu, spicy. I think the night always calls for spicy food. When it’s almost light I finally start to get sleepy enough to crawl back into bed.
After another sleepless night, I went to pick up a package from a parcel point. The employee asked me, for clarification: “You showed me a driver’s license, right?”. For convenience’s sake, I took that as a sign for the next morning. Was it a sign? Probably not. But it was good to believe in it for a moment, because I finally slept without any problems. I went into the exam well rested and shortly afterwards it was over again. With a firm handshake I was wished many safe kilometers and I was quickly referred to the town hall.
2023-10-17 15:22:49
#sleep #means #lot #extra #time #DUB #DUB