{"id":11412,"date":"2019-10-14T14:08:56","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T18:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=11412"},"modified":"2019-10-14T14:08:56","modified_gmt":"2019-10-14T18:08:56","slug":"three-a-m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2019\/10\/14\/three-a-m\/","title":{"rendered":"Three A.M."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is 3 am and my eyes are drooping as readily as my spirits. It is 3 am and most of my fellow students have been dreaming for hours. Maybe I have been dreaming, too. That would certainly explain how the mild ceiling lights flash like lightning with every blink. Maybe it is only in my delirious mind, soaked in a concentrated solution of caffeine, stress, and over-read notes. This night it is the latest economics problem set that has rendered my brain a useless instrument. I keep puffing, but the same tune keeps playing. Wrong answer. Wrong answer. There is no one to ask for help now. After all, it is 3 am.<\/p>\n<p>The night is too quiet for my brain to keep up this frantic urgency. Everyone else is moving at a lethargic pace now, their dreams changing with the consistency of maple syrup. I want to be drowning with them. Theirs is a slow-developing paradise, mine is a never-ending purgatory. The sun will not raise his cheery, golden head for another few hours yet. With the lightening skies, comes a renewed confidence, one borne of a culminating desperation. One does not grow hopeful without dancing on the edge of the abyss. But even that dangerous hope is still far away; for now, the night remains stubbornly irresolute. Detail become lost and everything becomes shaded within indefinite lines. Even the music that pounds in my ears becomes a fuzz. What are they saying? It doesn\u2019t matter anymore; all that matters is what I\u2019m trying to say. Wrong answer. Wrong answer. Wrong answer.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know why I keep trying. Futile efforts wasting passing minutes until I must acknowledge that I haven\u2019t been moving, probably haven\u2019t shifted since at least 1 am. But this is the penance I pay for my incompetence earlier in the day. Avoiding responsibilities is easiest when you can see them. Why had I spent those precious hours browsing the web? In the depths of the night, these questions lack meaning. I can erase all the consequences of my careless distraction if only I can find the right answer. Right answer. Even that has begun to lack meaning. It is 3 am and there seems to be no journey and no end. No significance and no insignificance. Every action may have some unknown, weighted meaning. If only I could get some sleep, I might be able to divine it. But right now, I may as well grasp at the lengthening shadows.<\/p>\n<p>It is 4 am and I am slipping into bed. Already, unconsciousness is sinking its soft claws into my consciousness. I will have to wake up soon, blinking away sleep in the blinding light. And then I will yearn for the grey quiet of 3 am once again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is 3 am and my eyes are drooping as readily as my spirits. It is 3 am and most of my fellow students have been dreaming for hours. Maybe I have been dreaming, too. That would certainly explain how the mild ceiling lights flash like lightning with every blink. Maybe it is only in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2183,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11412"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2183"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11415,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11412\/revisions\/11415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}