Between the dark and the daylight, when the night is beginning to lower,

-- Monday, November 29, 1999 -- ------------   2:26 a.m. I am now a proud new member of an online journal collaboration ring called On Display, and tonight's entry is my very first effort for this august group. The topic is routine, as in: What is your daily routine in the morning or the evening? Well, my mornings are pretty -- no that's not the right word -- my mornings are generally the same as yours and yours and yours. Shock, coffee, dogged moil. But my nights! Ah, the glorious freedom that stretches across my horizon as the last golden wisps of clouds absorb the inky light. The phone falls silent. The email dwindles away. Igor dozes in a heap. The 11 o'clock news has come and gone, the leftovers are covered, and the dishes are in the machine. I will not be disturbed now for approximately six fabulous hours, depending. Depending on my nap. Everything good and productive about the night depends on the nap. If you, too, want to live the equivalent of two! Two! Two days in one, you need merely follow my simple advice. With just a little practice and slight of hand, you will be doubling your work capacity -- overnight! Plus, if you like to waste time -- well, you've come to the right place. Now you'll have more time to waste than ever before ... and even less to show for it. It all begins with a good nap. You have to find the hours in your day that you otherwise squander on low-level slogging and minimum, dead-on-your-feet maintenance tasks. I might suggest the space from 7 to 9 p.m. if you don't have children, or the useless hours from 3 to 5 if you're in a house full of them. Between cartoons and neighborhood pals and salty snacks, they might not even miss you. Of course, if there are no kids around and you work at home with only yourself as boss, there's a lot less sneaking and a lot more sleeping. The secret is to fall asleep as quickly and as soundly as possible. You can be most efficient if you have a nice plate of carbohydrates, a nice textbook on C++ or Perl, and a nice heating pad for the small of your back. Combine these three elements and voila! You will (almost) instantly sleep the sleep of the just.

However, you will also awaken with a start because something in the outside world has called you back, and your dreams will be most vivid and troubling -- but not to worry -- the TV is usually going and the world has managed without you for an hour or so. It's natural to feel a little abashed when you first wake up ... especially if your hair is in a cockatoo frill and there are pillow creases and drool on your cheek. The worse thing is when your ear gets flapped over and it so very ... slowly ... painfully ... unfolds itself ... ... ok. Now, you merely pour yourself some tea or coffee or a Jolt-like beverage, pick up your lines and resume playing whatever part of the household drama you've signed up for. Eventually, one by one, the place will quiet down for the night; man, child, pets, and pests will all slow and weaken and toddle off to bed. The night is yours! Yours is the web to wander without interference. Phone lines are less busy and modems don't crash as often and servers open up for your files the way they pretended they would. The hours on the other side of midnight seem, somehow, more serious. Concentration is possible because there's nobody delivering packages or stopping by for a quick chat. There is no traffic noise, no helicopters thrumming overhead. You can actually get on your own train of thought and ride it all the way to Clarksville. I started taking naps and staying up late when my kids were in grade school and I was taking evening courses at the local college. Eventually, I gathered up enough credits to transfer and to attend regular classes during the day, but by that time the habit of a nap and night work became so ingrained that I've never completely stopped doing it. Take tonight, for instance. It's now 3:05. I'll be finishing this piece up in, oh -- maybe another half hour or so, depending on how cleverly I want to end this or how neatly I am able to close things down. A little less wit and I could be asleep sooner. Actually, that's not such a bad idea. The candy I've hidden away from Halloween is almost gone. I've got maybe two Fifth Avenue bars left, and it's really too late now for a sugar rush. How about a nice little spell check, a couple of quick reloads, and we call it a night?

Comes a pause in the day's occupations That is known as the Children's Hour. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1860