1:03 AM

The silence of the early morning made me hear natural sounds of the surrounding at this hour of the day. I can hear the faucet dripping. I can hear the fan rotating as it tries to distribute the air in my room. I can hear the crackling of my bed. The barking dog outside, as it tries to talk of whatever it sees. The dog has been doing that for days.

I’m looking at the lower deck ceiling of my double-deck bed wondering what I’ve been doing with my life lately. I hate this kind of retrospection, but I’m trapped in this kind of questioning whenever I consume enough coffee the day before. But lately, I’ve started to see that I have detoured from my written life plan.

“After I’ve ended my contract on a project last year, I’ve decided to take a master’s degree in physics. I wrote a blueprint of what I was supposed to accomplish every month. By June, I was eager to start my journey as a student again. I attended classes religiously, listened to the repeated rant of the physics principles.

It was fun at first but started to become boring. The intellectual stimulation wasn’t enough, I guess. I’ve started reading other stuff beyond my field of study: I started to learn web development, basic of economics, finance, biology, computer science hardcore topics such as lambda calculus, and others I could not remember. And I stumbled upon cryptocurrency by accident.

My nights were different from then on.”

1:30 AM

I closed my eyes, hoping I could escape from such pondering. The darkness, as I closed my eyes, served as a canvass of thoughts in my mental walls. It was a vandal of random images from my failings as a son, to my failure as a student. I started to see how I have taken for granted fundamental ingredients of life. My heart skipped – “ I’m not happy with what I’m doing now.”

It was unacceptable surrender. I had a hundred thousand pesos in my blockchain portfolio. We have a family store that is doing well. My brothers and sisters are doing well in Norway. My elder brother has his own shop. I am a scholar. I have a girlfriend. I am doing well in my studies somehow. What is missing in my life, now?

A flare of light started to shine on my brain as I try to self-diagnose my source of unhappiness. I have to admit that money is only a single aspect of the spectrum of happiness.

4:37 AM

I started to distract my self by reading scientific papers. I switched on my phone, clicked on the chrome, added a new tab and type, "unsolved scientific problems". A billion results appeared, I scrolled down and looked meticulously. "Which one to click?" After one or two problems, I got bored and transitioned to my twitter account.

As I scrolled down the grandiose exhibitionism of my twitter friends my mind was reeling: "I should sleep!". I did not sleep. After finishing all those feeds on my twitter I went straight to Steemit. I only visit two tags in steemit, mathematics, and the steemstem. I scouted the whole timeline of mathematics tag, nothing new, most topics are elementary. I was discontented. I went to steemstem looked for intriguing headers. Nothing new. I placed my phone on my chest. Sigh. This is a waste of time.

5:38 AM

It dawned on me. I started to replay my past, how happier I was even without enough money to buy stuff. I was happier doing the math and solving a physics problem. I was happier trying to recast mathematical solutions in my own way, creating new stuff based on my understanding of physics.

Being immersed in what I do, where time collapses. The tunnel-vision and the focus is on the action. I miss that, Zzzzzzz...

I slept well that morning.