Subterfuge

I’ve devised my own ways of going round about it. Two nights ago, I mentioned this to Chaida. I said to her, “I feel so conscious there because of the late hours I keep.” See, the people in this residence are “anti-late hours” and see, I’m an insomnia sufferer and it was worse even just a year ago and already, the hours I keep now are an improvement to hours I’ve kept before. I know that I am improving at a snail’s pace but improving I am. I know they can’t appreciate it but I am not going to let anyone take away my appreciation, relief and grateful sense of achievement over the small, incremental and gradual steps of progress I make.

It’s just that my late hours is made conspicuous because of tell-tale quirks of this blue-walled room I occupy that just quite simply by design shouts out my lights-on and lights-off schedule. It is adjacent to the master’s bedroom with only a might-as-well-be-paper-thin wall serving as a means for separation. Now, my room might have been an architectural afterthought, I am supposing, because this sort of paper thin wall features one large window made of jalousies. Thus, light and sound filter in a very unobstructed way from one room into the other and vice versa.

Now, I have thought from the very beginning that my sleeping hours might be welcomed with disapproval. And I’m kind of not wrong. While I do see their point, and have longed to implement it, the thing is, I believe that such a process takes time and patience. And understanding. Lots of understanding. Please?

So I continued on to Chaida: when I find the clock already ticking hours after twelve and reaching one in the morning, I make sure to turn my room’s light off, but then I turn on my laptop for light. She laughed and said, “Ha-ha, they’ll have ways of knowing, Cor! They watch the electric meter at night and if it has moved, they’ll know someone’s using up electricity when things are supposed to be off!”

So, I am talking about this right now, because I have an opened laptop on my lap (something that I usually do not do for purposes of trying to ensure a longer lifespan for my laptop Gimlie) and I am huddled inside the tent that I have tried to make out of my blessedly thick comforter. Minutes ago, I tried to write on a notebook using my cellphone’s monitor as a substitute flashlight. Since I had to punch in a number every 7 words or so in order for it to keep light, I finally tried thinking of more viable methods for getting some necessary ramblings done.

Before I settled into hiding under my comforter, I tried several corners of my room to find certain positions that would best meet my objective of maximizing writing comfort while reducing as much as possible the illumination the laptop’s monitor was bound to create. Right now, I’m wondering if it’s possible that I might lie flat on my stomach as I type away on this laptop under the bed. Now the table I have here is too high but that means that it provides ample room beneath it and maybe I could then wrap my comforters about it…writing under the table…

Good luck.