Sleep Tight

It’s not always you get the inspiration to write like a maniac. Normally you think you sound like an anguished adolescent, or a wartime diary-keeper pouring their hearts out. At night time though, anything goes.

The subject on my mind tonight, at 2.14 in the morning, is (quite understandably) insomnia. So many of us experience it – it’s simply a thing of the bubble. It’s something only the most disciplined of us can fight. I myself average a bedtime around 3-4am, and the trusted Blackberry PING!! tells me I’m rarely alone on any given night. It’s a force not to be reckoned with, so you might as well entertain it. Therefore I present to you a list of constructive night time activities (I’m assuming it’s not just an essay crisis all -nighter because that’s not insomnia – that’s Cambridge):

1) Look up the first thing you think of on Wikipedia and learn something new. Write this fact down or blog it – it could come in handy for a pub quiz or a painfully awkward silence.

2) Learn the lyrics of Slow Jamz-Twista. ‘Can you please, do it faster, do it faster’ ‘Damn baby I can’t do it that fast but I know someone who can…’ < Cue you and your chance to stun your friends into awed silence>.

3) Do your laundry. For the non-Emma students among us: we don’t get the luxury of a personal laundress. Chances are, there will be a machine or two available for you to hog with your LONG overdue wash.

4) Start brainstorming that business plan. Yes, the one you keep talking about with your friends – the one that will save you having to do those applications to sign away your summer/life to a big shot firm. Plus it’s about time Cambridge hatched a new story – the ‘Innocent Smoothie’ guys have been riding on their altruism for long enough now.

5) Back-up plan: do an application. They do pay pretty well and an actual job will put you in a good place to pay back that unthinkable debt you’ll have on the other side of graduation.

6) Try not to think about panda bears for an hour. Harder than you think.

7) Shop online. The wee small hours are the only time of day when you’ll have the courage to press that ‘Confirm Order’ button.

8) Learn random phrases in Bangla (Bangladeshi language). They’ll make those Panther Cab journeys so much more entertaining.

9) If all else fails – date Ariane. She’s hard to resist.

There’s a kind of unusual fervent energy the wee hours bring. Don’t let it slip away, channel it: it could put your name in bright lights one of these days…