Falling asleep in work is a strange experience. You come in early on a Thursday to a dim and entirely empty office. You don’t turn the lights on, because you never turn the lights on. The whole wall of the L-shaped room is made up of a series of large windows. You’ve never been able to figure out why anyone turns the lights on, ever. Except maybe at five in the evening on a winter’s day. But every morning someone comes in like clockwork and lights the place up like electricity was going out of fashion. There is no increased clarity of vision. The notes on your desk do not come into sudden and vivid focus. The only noticeable result is that everything gets bathed in a sickly, yellowish light that will be your atmosphere for the rest of the day.
For the moment, however, the lights are still off, and the office is still empty. You rest your head in your hands, and even though you’ve been up for over an hour, it feels like you left bed about three minutes ago, and sleep is tantalisingly close again.
Your internal monologue is making suggestions. “Just go with it. Close your eyes for a second. Sleep.” Because internal monologues generally seem to champion whatever will make you feel good in the next two minutes. Short-term view I guess. It’s rare to get that whispering voice in your head saying, “You should probably get started on that savings account you’ve been meaning to open. C’mon. Get going.”
So for once you give in and rest your forehead on the desk, and you’re not quite asleep but you could definitely be classed as “dozing”. It feels wonderful. You are cheating at life and getting away with it. You keep an ear out for the door, which should give you at least three seconds warning before anyone rounds the corner. You stay in this state for what could possibly be ten minutes but feels more like an hour. Twice the door opens and you jerk your head up, but whoever it is walks in the opposite direction to the other side of the floor. When one of your co-workers does walk in you have drifted too deep to react in time. You lurch into an upright position and stare at them with confused eyes as they sit down across from you. There is almost certainly a red impression on your forehead from the desk. You remain unable to answer their simple questions for some time.