Hallucinations of a caged night owl

Image Credit/FlexJobs

Fellow Kenyans,

I am making yet another feeble attempt to revive my writing career which has clearly failed to take off. This might explain the uncalled for salutation when my blog has only been read a disappointing six thousand times since I penned the first few enthusiastic lines as a wide-eyed freshman in 2012. I actually haven't given much thought to this post since the motivation to lethargically punch a few gradually rubbing-off keys on this Beijing-made notebook is something I have considered an asset for more than a decade but in recent years, I have been battling; nocturnality.

After lying in bed for two hours and counting backward from a thousand twice to no avail, my mind ever alert perhaps from the coffee I was pumping in earlier my thoughts have wondered to the wildest sectors of my imagination. When you really need to sleep because you have an early morning and a busy day ahead, but can't, you really get to understand the utter magnitude of time. The tick of the clock so distinctive, you realise how much time we have to chase our goals even in one single day. But since you don't want to be drowsy the next day, the wisest thing you can do is to get out of bed at 4am and opened your neglected blog to type an incoherent narration to an imaginary audience formally addressed as fellow Kenyans.

Of course, I could take refuge in an assertion that is surprisingly supported by 'science' that night owls are more intelligent than morning larks. Writing in Psychology Today, Satoshi Kanazawa quotes a study of young Americans that supports the prediction that more intelligent children grow up to be more nocturnal as adults than less intelligent children. I immediately dismissed this strange claim before I googled up the author (which you should always do, google me!) and found his remarkable credentials. Dr Kanazawa, who identifies as an evolutionary psychologist, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), ranked second in the world for social sciences and management subjects. Some of his other 'bizarre' publications I picked up from his research of over two decades include: Why do very unattractive workers earn so much? and Why beautiful people have more daughters  (for the book, click here). After finding unusual claims (without really reading them), I still wouldn't claim more than normal intelligence to be associated with my lack of sleep.

In fact, what I should be more worried about (obviously, other than the fact that I haven't invented something notable yet) is the possibility of chronic insomnia which is associated with daytime sleepiness, low energy, irritability and a depressed mood which when combined would explain my failure to invent. This is said to be caused by stress, anxiety, and depression or simply uncomfortable beds, caffeine or alcohol. But wouldn't that mean I have been stressed, anxious and depressed or sleeping in an uncomfortable bed etc. for the last 10 years? The last few months at LSE though have been nothing short of stressful.... but not depressing. That said, you want to read this beautiful piece by the reigning Miss Progress International - Kenya, the hopeless unromantic Audrey Rendo on dreams of the insomniac.

Now, without talking too much about myself (after founding no word to mean this), which earlier blog posts have been about and something I really detest in people and having been unfortunate enough to meet loads of narcissists, I am committing the next series of posts to be less about the little idiosyncrasies of my being and more on the peculiarities of our existence precisely now from a vantage point of the Global North.

After saying that I actually realise I might slip right back to 'me' and the experiences that have come to define my brief stay in London but you can be sure I will not be serving this with a pinch of "oh, look at me, am awesome!' or 'poor me, am stranded!'

Ideally, I was supposed to chronicle my postgrad life on this weblog for eternity but I have found every excuse to not type even a single paragraph (I did try a physical journal for two weeks, now I can't find it!) in the true spirit of procrastination till now.

We are still going to stay conversational dear friends....um... fellow Kenyans. Now please pray for my friend Eddy Ashioya, a struggling writer by all standards [Citation needed], grappling with an unconventional genre, who is by his own admission, a proud career student at some village college he calls Woi University. He says he'll leave school when he has an audience as big as his soon-to-be-incarcerated mentor, Cyprian Nyakundi. Read him at your own risk.