How To Fall Asleep: A Step-By-Step Guide -The Toast

You’re not supposed to take your laptop into bed with you at night, so compromise by bringing a book or a magazine in addition to your laptop this time. At some hazy, ill-defined point, decide you are “done” using your laptop “for the day” and put it away somewhere.

Reading at night is so quiet. You used to do this all the time in junior high, reading books in bed until you fell asleep. You can do it again. It’s weird that nothing’s burning the tops of your legs right now. And reading is so slow. And turning the pages are so loud. This feels made up.

Wait, though, you need your computer back for a thing.

Do the thing.

Real fast, look at pictures of food. Any pictures, doesn’t matter.

More specific than that, though.

Enter the name of the last movie you saw on TVTropes.

Are there any episodes of Futurama you haven’t seen?

No, but you’ve only seen the one with Flexo like twice, so basically yes. Watch that one.

Aren’t there recaps of classic Futurama episodes on The AV Club you could be reading while you watch? Yes. Open them up.

Oh man, remember Slingo? Find Slingo and play that for a while until your arms hurt from too much T-Rexing on your keyboard.

Your cat is meowing. Your whole apartment is just one room, it’s not even an apartment, it’s one room with a door on it and also a shower cubicle, so there’s nowhere to put him. Put him in the bathroom.

Being in the bathroom reminds of you of how every afternoon you can hear your neighbor playing video games through your bathroom window. It sounds like classic Sonic, but that can’t be what they’re playing all the time. Think about video games.

The bathroom doesn’t have a door on it, so you can’t lock him in there. You should have made more money, so that you could have multiple rooms to live in.

Search “how long do cats live”

It’s forever.

Especially if they don’t go outside, which he never does anymore.

Open the front door a little, to see if he’ll go into the hallway and leave you alone.

He won’t, but he’ll sit right in front of the door and look out the bit you’ve cracked open.

He’s so close to leaving you alone. Nudge him with your foot.

Close your door after your neighbor who is just getting home looks into your ~~apartment~~ room. It’s awfully messy, considering you only have the one room to take care of.

Do you still have Jeeves in the Springtime, or did you lend that out to someone? Check all your bookcases.

Pick up your cat and put him in the hallway and shut the door to see what happens.

He’s sitting right outside the door, meowing, like the majestic and solitary creature he isn’t.

Open the door.

Get up and feed him again because that usually shuts him up for a little while, even though he eats too much already and does nothing all day and cat diabetes is probably inevitable.

Someday you will own multiple rooms to live in.

Search “how long do cats live diabetes”

How many kinds of cats are there?

What’s that one kind of cat?

Oh yeah, it’s a Maine Coon.

What’s that kind of cat that likes water? From Mongolia or somewhere. That water cat. Look that cat up.

What do you think you could learn about Ba’hai in twenty minutes? Find out.

What are the differences between being Ba’hai and Sikh again? Find that out too.

This is ridiculous. Too many tabs open. Just close your laptop and turn the light out.

Remember that thing you did that one time? That was terrible. Think about it now, real hard.

Pick your laptop back up off the floor. What could you learn about Anglo-Saxon paganism right now?

Learn as much as you can about Anglo-Saxon paganism, right now.

What’s a “corpse path”?

Which president is the one who still has two grandsons alive? It’s Tyler, right? Is it Tippecanoe and Tyler too, or Tippecanoe and Taylor too? It has to be Tyler, because Taylor was after Lincoln and Tippecanoe was before.

Taylor was actually before Lincoln but you were still right about Tyler.

What are some different opinions people have had on Lincoln? Find out.

Maybe Dear Prudence has updated since this afternoon. Go check.

What do you think has happened to everyone you have ever dated? Look them all up.

Think of all the places you’ve fallen asleep in. Apparently you’ve done it pretty much every night before this one, hard as that may be to believe. What was your secret? Think.

Just shut your computer. Just decide, arbitrarily, to be done for the day, and decide to not be anything for a while, somehow. Put your laptop on the floor again in that weird sliding technique where it doesn’t quite fall but you don’t actually have to quite sit up, either.

Think about dying, and how once you’ve died, you’ll be dead forever. Think of the entire planet as an ocean liner constantly heaving itself up higher and higher towards a blazing furnace, and each top layer is incinerated neatly as each successive generation is scythed from the surface of the earth, and how this will happen to you.

Think about how quickly your skin would sear off if someone peeled back the entire ozone layer and let the sun really get at you.

Your cat is on your ankles. Kick him off. Bring your laptop back up into the bed.

Search “fall asleep meditation”

That doesn’t sound like the ocean at all. Find another one.

Think about a forest, or something.

That’s not enough to think about. That still leaves a lot of your brain to be bored. Just wait to sleep to come pick you up, like you’re at soccer practice.

It’s taking forever. Open TVTropes again instead. And that old “Negroni Season” piece on the Awl. And find out how Raise the Red Lantern ended again. Did she die, or just go crazy? I think she might have died, but she might have just gone crazy.

Wait for it to be tomorrow.

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.

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Fluffernutter 111p · 568 weeks ago

My morning:

Receive email from boss with 4 attachments he needs printed.
As those are printing, receive a call from boss asking you to pick up the document on the printer that he just printed.
Pick up document and deliver to boss, then wait for the previous 4 documents to finish printing.
Staple and organize documents and hand them to boss.
When you get back to desk, see another email from boss asking you to print another document.

Rend garments and run screaming from your life.

How To Fall Asleep: A Step-By-Step Guide

ByDaniel Mallory Ortberg

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