Activities to occupy your time with at 3 a.m.

By Ava Zardynezhad, August 11 2022—

So, for one reason or another, you’ve found yourself wide awake at 3 a.m. Despite your valiant efforts, lying back down and closing your eyes for the thousandth time has not been effective at putting you back to sleep. Here are a few things to occupy your time with, while you’re up and at it. 

Reorganize your bedroom

This one is a no-brainer. You’ve been considering a change in scenery for a while now. What better time to get your entire life together and clean your room for the first time in two semesters? Grab a microfibre cloth and get cleaning. This activity is best enjoyed with a side of perusing social media for room decor ideas — subsequently getting distracted and abandoning the task at hand. 

Go on a culinary adventure

This might be my personal favourite activity for a sleepless morning. This adventure usually begins with downloading the newest culinary show on your favourite streaming service, because you’ve already brushed your teeth, and let’s be honest, you really don’t want to go through the whole routine again. But, after a couple of episodes, you will inevitably get hungry and decide to move the party to your kitchen. Unfortunately, you are still a student who hasn’t shopped for groceries in two weeks. You will search the depths of your freezer to find a Costco Polish hotdog buried in time. A classic hotdog will be as adventurous as you’re going to get this morning. 

Dig up ancient secrets 

Warning: this activity can be a little disruptive to others sharing your space or in the general vicinity. You’ve always wondered if there are any secret passageways within your living quarters. Determined to find them, you knock on every wall, listening for hollow spots. You do end up discovering a secret door that leads to a shrine dedicated to memorabilia from The Bee Movie — including but not limited to a bust of Jerry Seinfeld made purely out of honeycomb. You may or may not be fully conscious in this scenario. 

Curate a soundtrack for your life

They say music is a balm to the soul. In efforts to get your soul relaxed enough to fall asleep, you end up down a streaming rabbit hole. You see the next years of your life pan out in front of your eyes as the songs come and go and you think to yourself, “wow, this would make a great feature film.” You end up making a two-and-a-half-hour playlist of carefully selected songs to soundtrack your life from birth up to a completely imaginary and unnecessarily dramatic future. Side effects of this activity include thinking you could actually turn this scenario into a movie and trying to write a screenplay. 

Fraternizing with moths 

Since there’s no sleep in the foreseeable future, you turn on your lights in hopes of doing something productive. However, all that does is attract moths to your window. At first, you’re not alarmed — except for a few soft thuds that bring your attention to your window every now and again. But, as more time passes, you notice a giant figure with red eyes approaching. As the Mothman approaches the well-lit safe-space of your chambers, however, you realize that the cryptid is indeed nothing more than three thousand moths in a man suit.

Ponder your mortality 

I wouldn’t recommend embarking on this journey unless you’re completely out of options. This is an incredibly diverse, choose-your-own-adventure style mindgame. You can start anywhere from questioning whether this random mole on the back of your thigh has always been there to thinking about how the stars you see from your window are dead light from potential current-blackholes headed towards our galaxy. Once you do commit to this activity, clear any plans of sleeping for the next three to five business days. 

If none of the options above appeal to you, feel free to roll around in bed until you finally fall asleep. 

This article is part of our humour section.