When should I count as the start of my day? Is it exactly at 0 o’clock when I abruptly wake after two hours of sleeping, immune to any sleeping pills I consume right before bed? After tossing and turning, I usually go to my workroom and write poems or read books and manga until my eyes get tired, and then crawl to get some shuteye on the rough surface of a cheap Bohemian-pattern rug spread just under my chair, slightly past 2 a.m.

Or is it when I open my eyelids just as the short hand sits awkwardly between 3 and 4, and I begin musing again, browsing the web, or posting random rambles on my Instagram story, being both too honest and undecipherable as I sway between consciousness and dreams? As the sun starts to rise, my stomach will growl, and I stuff anything I can call breakfast into my stomach. The real sleepiness will finally hit at 6. I will then slip back to bed, ignoring doctors’ suggestions not to lie down after eating, and am usually accompanied by one of my furbabies. I pet him until my hand stops moving and I once again lose myself in slumber.

But I guess the right answer is somewhere after 7 and before 8, because that is around the time I prepare to work. Isn’t work the actual definition of a day, as it eats a chunk of our time yet is not considered wasted? If time allows, I’ll step on the treadmill or hit the gym. Sadly, most of the time, it does not allow, as I will have a meeting right after I should clock in at 9.

And just like a good white-collar worker, I spend my 9 to 5 time fixing, restructuring, and rewriting other people’s words until they are presentable enough to publish them–“just in!” The luxury is I can work from home as there is no necessity to commute for two hours to the office, the amount of time you need to spend living in a metropolitan area that always manages to make it onto the list of cities with the worst traffic in the world. I am privileged unless I have a very formal meeting, in which case I have to wrestle with thousands of vehicles in this wild asphalted river. Nonetheless, virtual meetings won’t stop bugging me anyway and disrupt the flow of my main job as a word fixer.

Also, like a typical good worker, I will take a quick break for an hour around lunchtime, when I read some news or books while lying on the rug again, then back to the laptop, rummaging through my inbox to see whether there are new pitches or stories that were left behind before continuing tapping the keyboard non-stop until my reminder chimes to tell me it’s time to clock out.

Then and there, the fatigue finally sets in. But my therapist is against me sleeping too early, and I have to wait until 10. We have no other choices because there are no sleeping pills that work for me, so we try to fix just whatever we can, like my sleep routine. So I fight back with all my might by going back to my laptop, writing poems, learning random stuff on the net, or working again like a habit.

Wait, did I have lunch? Oh, right. I did not even remember. But I need to have my meds, so I again stuff anything I can chew with those colorful pills. And finally, I hit the hay—at 10. And wide awake, at 0 o’clock.

How do I waste most of my time? Work.

Oh, a typo there. I mean words. Words other people write, words I write, and words I need to fix. Considering all that, I don’t think I waste time.

All I waste is my life.