When I was a child and bedtime was looming, I would often get a second wind around eight or nine p.m. and undertake some typical kid project—like drawing yet another picture of my fantasy drum set, making paper airplanes, reading another Isaac Asimov book, or punching myself in the face—just before I was supposed to go to bed. My mother would discover me in this industrious mode and say, “Jake, it’s not time for a new project. It’s time for bed. No new projects.” [1] My father would then enter the room and say something wise along the lines of “Goddamn it, you were ready for bed half an hour ago. What the hell happened?” My paper airplanes would go into the trash and I’d be herded upstairs.

What happened is that I did indeed get my second wind, and all these years later I still tend to find that I’m at my most productive, energetic, and creative late at night, when the rest of the world is sleeping. This would be fine if it didn’t mean that I slept far too late the next day, and that by sleeping in until, say, 1 p.m., I was being exposed to basically no sunlight this time of year, and so felt like a miserable, lazy bastard, especially compared to the startling number of friends I have who get up at seven a.m. even if they don’t have a good reason to. (What is their deal, anyway?)

Which isn’t to say I’ve been resting on my laurels, whatever those are. Over the five weeks [2] I had off before school started this week, my late-night projects included but were not limited to: completing about 1500 crossword puzzles; watching the entire third season of Veronica Mars, the first season of Flight of the Conchords, and the only season of Undeclared; launching and then immediately adandoning an ill-conceived bookshelf-alphabetizing initiative; making half-hearted forays into writing my syllabus; learning Sufjan Stevens songs on the piano; recording a GarageBand cover of my favorite 80s song [3]; purchasing and assembling a bedframe; reading absolutely zero books in their entirety aside from this one; going to Cloverfield [4]; playing my drums along with every Gabriel-era Genesis album; and once in a while, every few days, actually making progress on my writing.

In fact, last night I discovered that I had suddenly, improbably, despite all the aforementioned activities and way too much reversing day and night, finished the rough draft of my thesis. I immediately emailed all 225 pages of it to myself as a safeguard against potential hard drive meltdowns, then tried to think about the next step, whatever that is. According to many writers more experienced than I am [5], revision is often more difficult than writing the first draft, so I still have plenty of opportunities to fuck it all up. But for now, I’m going to unwind by listening to this beautiful song.

And then, I guess it’ll be time for another new project. Sorry, Mom.

[1] My mother makes her living teaching college students better study skills, which often translates to dispensing common-sense advice about how best not to fuck up their academic careers. One of her favorite apothegms to students pulling all-nighters is, “You can’t reverse day and night,” which I still occasionally hear to this day, and to which I still have trouble adhering (see m.t. ¶ infra).

[2] (!)

[3] “Something About You” by Level 42, thank you very much.

[4] Which, by the way, HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT.

[5] (i.e., all writers)