Confessions of a Retired Night Owl

If you asked me, ‘how is your time management?’ five or six years ago, that girl back then would have briskly crab-walked out of that conversation, never to be seen again.

To put it bluntly: It absolutely sucked.

On any given night of the week, you could find me wide awake at 4:00 AM, basking in the blue-light glow of a laptop screen with my latest shiny headset on. It was the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and since I was stuck indoors, my sleep schedule evaporated almost instantly.

Back then, time worked differently. It felt more like a suggestion than a rule.

Nighttime was when I truly came alive. While my neighborhood was silent, I was deep in the digital trenches. I spent my nights:

• Chasing the High – Fighting world bosses to burn off all that unspent daytime energy.
• The Grind – Staying up for the “one more raid” that would finally drop that rare weapon.
• The Global Chat – Being glued to a group chat with international friends that literally never slept. Somewhere in the world, someone was always awake and ready to talk.

If I’m being honest? It was a gaming addiction, fuelled by a world that had ground to a halt. My “mornings” didn’t start until the sun was high in the sky. In fact, I don’t even think I remembered what a morning looked like.

The shift happened in waves. I’m not sure which came first: my own desperate effort to sleep earlier, or the medication for my anxiety and bipolar. Honestly, it was probably both.

Suddenly, staying up until 3:00 AM wasn’t just a bad habit—it became physically impossible. My body staged a takeover. It was no longer a choice; it was a biological mandate that turned out to be a massive blessing in disguise.

I’m not sure which came first; my effort to gradually shift an earlier sleep time or the medication for my anxiety and bipolar. Or both. Either way, it got to a point where it was physically impossible to be awake past midnight, let alone 3AM. It was no longer a choice; it was a biological mandate that ended up being a blessing in disguise.

Nowadays, I know what mornings look like, how each minute, the sunrise changes the colours of the clouds, and I can watch cars and school vans rushing to wherever they need to be. I wake up to well-made coffees (or more precisely, mocha) and buns that fuel me for the rest of the day.

And honestly? That’s a much better way to fuel my “stats” than a 4:00 AM raid ever was.