The Insomnia Button 🔘

It's been almost a year that I have properly built something for my website. And now, a simple button is keeping me up at night. Even though you might expect this from a user experience designer, I don't spend my nights racking my brain over the mere implementation of a filter button. There something else about this button that's agitating me.

Sleep is overrated

The longest I ever went without a proper night of sleep was a nine-month period. Within half a year in that period, I concluded that "sleep is overrated anyway". After having tried for that long to regain the ability to sleep, I had finally given in to a default state of sleeplessness. "That's my life now—but who needs sleep really?".

Luckily, sleep did return eventually.

Four years later and I feel a lot wiser. I don't just succumb to desperation. Sleep isn't overrated. It's essential. One needs to rest, to recharge, to process. And yet, insomnia has been a constant companion for all that time now.

An agitating button

So what's keeping me up at night? An annoyingly loud group of reckless partying neighbours in their mid-twenties? A body longing for exercise? A screen that demands an infinite amount of my attention?

In the end, it's my mind. A mind, so agitated that it seems untamable. So very agitated, a mere button can stop it from resting. Not because I spend my nights racking my brain over its implementation. It's because I love building user interfaces, apparently even as much as I love writing. I just get too excited over things I love to do.

If only I could sleep. I mean seriously—It's just a button.