My Days and My Nights

What a topsy turvy week it has been. I am a man of simple prejudices and even simpler notions. One such basic idea that I harbour can be summed up as days are for doing things and nights are for sleeping. A simple notion, an elegant if rather prosaic division of the day into two parts and a formula that would be rather easy for even an idiot like me to adhere to. So you would imagine.

If there has been a week in which that notion failed profoundly this has been it.

On Monday with the start of the new school term, I journeyed off to HKU for my first class in a series of eleven on Securities Regulation in the HKSAR. Similar travels occupied my Tuesday (International Trade Law) and Wednesday (Competition Law) as is the case when you are required, by your desire to graduate this year, to do three classes in a semester. Thursday saw me out and about again in the evening, first to Soho, that trendy paradise of the fashionista before wandering from one end of Hong Kong to its midpoint and then back again to the end. My feet have the blisters to testify how unused I am to walking such epic distances. Friday night saw me fulfill my duties to both parents and God, first of to the markaz to watch movies I’ve already seen, although I did occupy myself by playing games on my phone, which was probably some sort of sacrilege before venturing into the unknowable despair of Kowloon. And finally came today evening, off bowling and then eating with friends once again, bringing this set of days to a close. The only consolation is that tomorrow I don’t have anything planned as far as I know. A small concession to my principles.

Now in contrast if I were to list the way I filled my days, I could not compile a longer list of the dire and desperate than that account, and for that very reason I will refrain from doing so. Suffice it to say that my main accomplishment of the week was to send 3 emails in sequence which may have the end result of getting my dissertation up to speed and finally more concrete than shadowy it its likelihood of becoming a writeable document. I suppose it’s not a trivial accomplishment, but really it’s not a lot of work to be proud of to sum my achievements in a week.

My upturned timetable, my wrong sided life, to me still does not appeal. Others have advocated the seductive world view that the day is for work and the night is for nightlife, but I cannot find in me the commitment of intellect, energy and will to take this suggestion up to be the truth, for I find that I cannot indulge in both and give both the quality and the clarity that I know they deserve from me to maximize their value. I don’t suggest that I can do one or the other, but rather that it takes too long a day for me to triumph over.

I still have as a ground rule the notion that things are done in the day and it is one of the ideas that I am most keen to hang on to. I see it as a way of structuring my day so as to take advantage of the time that I now I’m most capable of doing my best work which is the mornings. I am that rare bird termed a morning person, who prefers to start the day at the earliest instance viable when there is sufficient reason to do so, and to then declare my day at a close around 6 pm regardless of the circumstances. I can begin things before that time and then keep going with them until they are finished, but I do not permit myself to begin new projects once this hour has passed.

And I mean all things in this – and in my ideal world I would include social events in this category. I would love to not have to begin anything social after that time, but it really does seem for the majority of the worlds this is a most unreasonable and unendurable position, and so out of a notion of flexibility and my basic nature as a political animal. It seems that I am discovering the difficulty of being a day person in a world of the night, and it will take some mental strength that I find difficult to dredge up to resolve this.