Awake since 3 am. I guess I should concede to reality: my body has no interest in sleep. Like Marcus Aurelius, I want to stay in bed because it’s warm and feels nice, but I will heed his admonishment. It’s time to get out from under the snuggly warm blankets and do what humans must do.
At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
Meditations, 5.1.
It’s dark. Raining.
I don’t want to read. I don’t want to write. I don’t want to lie in the dark quietly. I don’t want to get up and make a cup of coffee and just sit. I don’t want to eat, even though I’m a bit hungry. I don’t want to listen to music or podcasts. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to do. I don’t want to be in action, be poised for action, or be at rest.
All states of being are unsatisfactory, except being under the warm blankets in bed, in the dark, awake. And that is unsatisfactory, too.
Oh well. Let’s get up and make a cup of coffee. Something will happen. The dog will think it’s breakfast time for her. She will want to go outside, stick her nose out into the rain, and nope her way back inside.
Postscript. Awake for 90 min, to 4:30 am Decided to get up, and was about 6 steps toward the kitchen when I thought “oh, I could sleep” and went back to bed. Slept until 6:30 am. Good.