16 hours awake, 8 asleep.

I'm told lots of people sleep at 22:30 and wake up at 6:30. In Berlin at the height of summer, this means 15 hours of sunlight. In winter, 7 hours 39 minutes of light.

I'm stuck in the wrong timezone due to a neurological disorder. I wake at 12:00 and sleep at 04:00¹. At summer solstice, I enjoy 9 hours 33 minutes of daylight, and on December 21st, I savor 3 hours 54 minutes of light.

But I never ponder this during those daylight hours. It's usually at night, shuffling silently through the house with a glass of chocolate milk, my hand raised to find the edge of the door, that I take a moment to wonder how often others spend their waking hours in the silent darkness. This perspective is mine.

16 hours awake, 8 asleep. At most 12 hours 6 minutes after sundown, at least 6 hours 27 minutes after the sun has disappeared. It's a lot of alone time.

But how much of that do I actually spend in the dark? It's hard to say precisely, but generally once my wife goes to sleep, the lights go out. Often, after putting her to bed, I retreat back to the world of the living (population: two – our cat stays up with me until 02:30), but it feels strange to have too many lights on in a sleeping world, so unless I'm doing something that specifically requires light (showering, cooking and eating, and reading come to mind), I tend to leave the lights off.

This is generally just the final few hours of my day – maybe three to four. Still, I feel these hours drip with significance for who and why and what I am. Three or four sacred, quiet, focused hours, sometimes used for concentrated study or feverish tunnel-vision work of some kind, often wasted on scrolling social media, occasionally, but rarely, spent on a hobby that refuels me.

I love my quiet world.

I've met and befriended a couple of fellow sufferers of sleep disorders. One lived in the dorm next door in college, and would invite me over to watch movies at 3 a.m.

It's a strange mix of camaraderie and offense that I felt at these intrusions. An odd pairing of relief and jealousy, jealousy for the time that was and had always been mine alone.

I hope he's doing well tonight. Our last movie was years ago.

It's quarter to five, and I leave for work in 5 hours 15 minutes. I suppose I am tired, but it's hard to be sure.