(1) Hold solo concerts to a missing audience. Let’s get the first fact straight: I really cannot sing. I can warble my way through a tune and hit chords on a guitar. My strumming isn’t too bad. But something about the cover of darkness and the quiet sleepiness of post-2AM deludes my brain into thinking that I am the next female Conor Oberst. Quietly strumming minor chords and singing in that raspy-whisper-so-I-don’t-wake-my-parents-but-ooh-it-sounds-so-indie-esque whilst sitting in a half-lit room? What a fine example of the tragically creative young teenager, who obviously cannot hold in all her talent for a time where there is far less risk of waking up parents slash neighbours slash siblings.
(2) Draw or Paint Strange Things. Those who are attentive should already be noticing a pattern here. Most of my night time activities do seem to revolve around more creative hobbies. I used to be pretty big on drawing and painting a few years back, but lost that as my pile of schoolwork grew so big that it covered all light from my windows and left me fumbling in the dark unable to mix colours. (A gross exaggeration if there ever was one.) Sometimes, however, I will be overcome with a strong desire to doodle a zombie eating a brain popsicle, or maybe a cat riding a jellyfish. These sometimes also happen to usually be just as I am about to fall asleep, so I have to make the choice between nurturing my creativity right at that moment, or falling asleep with my head full of strange and brilliant ideas that I will forget in the morning. I will then hate my past self.
(3) Make Myself Really Hungry. I am pretty much kitchen impaired. I used to not be allowed in the kitchen when meals were being prepared because my mom was pretty much afraid that if I so much glanced at the food, my terrible cooking skills would leak out and contaminate that night’s lasagna. Despite that, I have also harbored quite a strong secret desire to be really good at cooking; to be able to whip up the most amazing, impressive meals, sending all my friends and family into admiration flurries. Unfortunately, this desire is facing a long battle between my laziness, which has triumphed over many other desires and plans. Therefore, instead of going into the kitchen and burning it down making a huge mess that would no doubt result in failure, I look up recipes and food and sit there and just think about making them, with the childish logic that if I somehow look up enough reviews and recipes for Red Velvet cake, I will one day suddenly be able to bake one worthy of the Gods of Mount Olympus themselves. In the meantime, however, I just make myself really hungry.
(4) Rediscover My iTunes Library. This is maybe the one nightly activity I do that I really adore myself for the next morning. I’ve gone through 3 – or maybe 4? – iPods, not including disc crashs and generally loss of music. Because I have filled my computer up to the brim with utter rubbish, I used to never backup my music properly, deleting tons once it had been dragged to my iPod, meaning I lost tons of songs every time. As my library is quite extensive, I have never fully recovered from each loss; there are always songs you forget to sync on or rip or download or you’ve lost that CD or someone’s borrowed it etc. Luckily, I sometimes randomly just go through my playlists and music, either (re)downloading or just listening to old songs. Picture the scene: girl, 17, playing mood music on her computer, dark outside, dark inside, fairylights and small bedside light on. Rainymood.com if she’s feeling particularly meaningful that night. Pretty intense stuff. And you know that feeling you get when you rediscover an old song you used to adore and it sounds just as good? Yeah, I think I’m addicted to that feeling.
(5) Think. Sometimes I write. If we are going to use silly bird metaphors in describing and categorizing the different sleeping patterns of people, I would definitely be a ‘night owl.’ I stay up late because I love the cover of darkness and the fact that everyone else in the household is asleep, making it essentially my place and time and anything else I want it to be. Talking aloud feels weird after a while and your eyes adjust to the half-light and there’s almost a small degree of surrealism. Suddenly, I am undisturbed and alone with my thoughts, and with this prompt, they run wild. Linked in with the fact I always feel most inspired and creative at night, this is obviously the best time to write; the world is suddenly concentrated on my screen and my fingers and the words in my mind and my ideas are just so alive because everyone else is asleep. A lot of the time, these ideas are nonsensical and will stay in my drafts folder until I feel like deleting them. A lot of the time, these ideas will be edited and improved and posted, making up a large majority of content here. A lot of the time, they will just be posted because I am full of raw creativity and talent god damn it.
P.S. It’s night time now.
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