Witching hour
a love letter to burning the midnight oil
Every now and then, TikTok ambushes my For You Page with girls who rise at 5 AM to do mat pilates in matching sets, journal in cursive, complete twelve tasks before noon, and tuck themselves into bed like Victorian children by 8 PM. If I followed this regimen, I, too, could allegedly become the best version of myself. But something about Circadian rhythms and cortisol and “living in alignment” is basically Elvish to me.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Unfortunately, at 5 AM, I am horizontal. Amnesic. And frankly, haunted. My thoughts are not organized into bullet journals, they are leaking out from under me. Where is the media representation for those of us whose brains don’t finish buffering until 2:48 AM? I would like to formally submit a defense of night owls – we are not lazy, debauched gremlins who hate discipline. We are moonlit philosophers. We don’t just “stay up late”; we descend into the night, when the world stops demanding duties and starts whispering ideas.
I believe bedtime is part-genetic, baked into DNA by thousands of years of ancestral sleep schedules optimized not for productivity apps, but survival. I once saw an anthropological theory (Reddit comment) on night owls descending from people who kept watch while the rest of their tribes slept. I’m convinced my family comes from this lineage, crouched by the fire with a spear in one hand and intrusive thoughts in the other. It would explain why my brother replies to my midnight texts with the reflexes of a trained sniper. Some inherit land or businesses; I, a biological urge to scroll in the dark and keep the group chat safe until dawn.
As someone living in NYC, solitude is not something I stumble into; it’s what I fight for, usually while dodging a pigeon dive-bombing my forehead during a lunch break. Between unread Slack messages and the constant pressure to be available, we’ve made it so the days no longer end; they blur. But when night falls, and the world does too, I exhale for a little, time-traveling to an earlier decade: one where I’m not summoned with a buzz, and being unreachable isn’t rude, but romantic.
Night is a hotbed for creativity precisely because it’s empty. Vast and ripe for actual thinking, not just planning what kind of salad to order while suppressing a panic attack. My golden window is between the hours of 12 and 2 AM: it’s too late to start a movie, so I’m left with my best and worst company, my little brain symphonies. This is when I usually write. I’m not religious, but here, I feel closest to a God – making something of nothing, feeling Her claw Her way out of my chest and onto a page that belongs entirely to myself. Franz Kafka famously wrote exclusively at night, in a “trance-like Dionysian activity, opening the endless inner darkness of self as an abyss,” because only at night does the abyss feel generous.
Don’t just take it from me and a tortured Czech man; Barack Obama is also a wolf on the Sleep Chronotype quiz. A study found that night owls could actually have superior cognitive function compared to early risers (PBS’ words, not mine!). Even mothers, our literal superheroes, crave nocturnal hours, when no one’s scream-crying at them to cut grapes, and they get to be people again.
Night is where chaos brews. Questionable decisions drag you into quagmires, only to ferment into legendary brunch stories the next day. There are certain activities sacred to witching hour that would simply cease to exist under the clinical glare of daylight, like Googling your high school frenemy to confirm she peaked then, or planning how to start a new life in a Portuguese seaside town. Half-finished texts are sent into the void. Plenty of room for nothing good to happen, which is exactly what makes it great. Nighttime is the rain, loosening the soil, wriggling the worms. And come morning, there it is: grass, freshly fertile. Proof that you are wild and undeniably alive.
Like all great things with duality, night’s one frustrating quirk is that it often gives fears a megaphone. Recently, I watched Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, where Sammy, the protagonist, plays blues music in the dead of night – breathing life into his community while also drawing in evil. Our greatest gifts, it seems, come with exposed wiring. In the film, fearsome spirits attempt to pull Sammy into their vortex, forcing him to resist and reclaim his voice.
My therapist once asked, “Are you more committed to your dreams or to your fears? What are you feeding more, the visions or the what-ifs?” Too often, my mind is overrun with unrealistic, disproportionate fears. Fear talks me out of big investments (financial, emotional, sartorial…). I’ll buy the $50 tank top that I know I’ll wear once, abnegating the $500 statement piece. Fear has kept me under-committed to the life I want, because if I don’t try, I can’t fail. (It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, really, aiming lower to avoid disappointment, and then ending up disappointed because you didn’t aim high enough.)
In the daylight, you can distract yourself with errands and matcha refills. At night, you are left alone with the version of you who never followed up, never sent in that application, never risked wearing the metaphorical $500 top. Here are a few of my fears that like to clock in after dark:
My bed is my refuge, until I remember I walked home through three subway platforms, two puddles and a deli floor that hasn’t been mopped in a year. How much bacteria am I sleeping with? Am I going to get a niche disease that can only be transmitted through NYC cockroaches?
What if the cockroaches in my apartment find love before I do? What if they’re currently raising a nuclear family under my radiator?
For all the space my bed takes up, somehow it shrinks the rest of my room. How long before I have enough dignity to claim more floor space?
Maybe this cramped life is the price of human connection. But if I’m paying a premium to live on top of people, why do they still drain me so much?
Do people think I hate them when I’m just introverted at first? Or worse, what if they hate me? Does my group chat have a separate group chat?
Why do I need so much validation? Why can’t I just enjoy things without wondering if someone’s watching – and deciding if I’m cool?
Who’s thinking about me right now? Are they missing my presence?
It would be fun to go out, but I’m also tired. Still, missing a core memory terrifies me. What if that bar moment is the last time I ever see someone, and I skip it, and they win an Oscar and forget me?
I should call my parents more. But am I still mad? Can I emotionally summon my higher self for a few minutes while they tell me to go get a Master’s degree?
Life is too short to spend holding a grudge and I should just let things go. I’ll be happier this way.
Life is too short to not have boundaries, and I should enforce them by holding a grudge. I’ll be happier that way.
Have I been thinking too much about other people and not focusing on myself? As a form of self-care, it’s time to impulse-purchase that watch I’ve been eyeing for two years. It will fix everything. Especially my personality.
Why the hell did I buy that watch? How much does this set me back on the path to home ownership?
What if the way to get to where I want is to manifest it by reaching for things beyond my means?
Manifestation requires a type of delusion that I’m too self-aware to allow. What if I’m simply too good at assessing what I have now and living in the moment, to set myself up for my future?
I’m also so deeply attached to the past that I still carry my 2019 MetroCard, even as it becomes obsolete. It’s a nostalgic token, a reminder of where I’ve been. Perhaps that’s why I’ve spent my entire young adult life in this city. Even when other places call, moving feels hard. What if I have no dreams beyond New York and this life I’ve built?
What if I don’t have enough time on this Earth to chase all the dreams I have beyond New York and this life I’ve built?
Night is when I’m left alone with my roguest thoughts, gnawing and echoing in loops. But here, I can finally see them for what they are: shadows and distortions, not truths. When they hit me all at once, I start sorting through them, pulling them into consciousness. Giving them shapes and names, so they don’t steer from the backseat while I autopilot through my days. And eventually, once that sorting begins to settle, my body sinks into the mattress, and my brain that once screamed softens into static, the kind that hums from my white noise machine as I finally drift off.
Such a beautiful piece of writing. Made me reflect on all the sleepless London nights where I go through my countless embarrassing moments until they all blend into this anxiety blur that eventually miraculously sends me to sleep 😴
I often find that we live in a world that is poor in interruption, and sometimes nights when the world silences and you are alone with yourself, access to that in-betweenness truly grants the mental rest you desperately need. I would also recommend the book 'The Burnout Society' by philosopher Byung-Chul Han (very short read), there's this quote that this piece reminded me of...
"If sleep represents the high point of bodily relaxation, deep boredom is the peak of mental relaxation. A purely hectic rush produces nothing new. It reproduces and accelerates what is already available"
full read: https://cdn.oujdalibrary.com/books/1012/1012-the-burnout-society-(www.tawcer.com).pdf