At 3am, I should be asleep. Why not revisit my biggest regrets instead?
Seven years ago, I mispronounced the word Arkansas at a fancy lunch hosted by a US tourism company. Instead of saying aa-kuhn-saw, I said it as if someone had asked me where The Wizard of Oz was set, and I needed to pause before answering: “Ah? Kansas.”
Naturally, everyone at the table laughed; someone even made a Dorothy joke – “I don’t think we’re in AhKansas any more, haha!” – I swore never to speak again, and then we all moved on. At least, I thought I had until my brain decided the ideal time to revisit this nightmare was last night (this morning?) at the ghastly hour of 3am.
Did you know the average person blinks 17 times a minute? I did. Because I Googled it at 3am.Credit: Michael Howard
For unclear reasons, this is the window we consistently reserve for interrogating our past mistakes. With bedtime a distant memory and daylight an eternity away, something deep inside tells us that we should definitely not go back to sleep but rather torture ourselves with a traumatic trip down memory lane.
This can take many forms. A montage of your most embarrassing moments, a catalogue of every bad decision you’ve made, complete with obsessing over what your life would be like if you’d done something different. My personal favourite is rehearsing entire conversations with people who have wronged me, only to realise in the morning that I would sound completely insane.
Once I’m done with the past, I move on to the future. It’s only 3.45am, meaning I have at least two solid hours for catastrophising.
Depending on my mood, I either cycle through a few regular topics – money, career, whether that dull pain in my stomach might be a cluster of tumours – or focus on an existential crisis to mix things up. They say time flies when you’re having fun, but it really flies when you’re calculating how many weekends you have left if the average Australian man dies at 81, and you are currently 35. (It’s 2392.)
Given that almost everyone I know seems exhausted all the time, this vicious wake-and-worry cycle seems illogical, yet experts claim it’s pretty standard. In the early morning hours, our core body temperature rises, sleep drive is reduced, the flow of melatonin is edging off, and the levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) begin to increase.
We’re primed to stir, which is why experts recommend that you absolutely shouldn’t pick up your phone or check the time. Unfortunately, this two-for-one mistake is easy to make as I reach down the side of my bed and pick up my phone, which just so happens to double as an enormous clock.
