The Library After Midnight

College got me accustomed to working at night when everyone else was sleeping. It all started because our library didn't have enough seating available to accommodate everyone and the only way to find a place to study was after midnight when everyone had long gone back to their dorms. It was a routine that required getting used to. It was unnerving being somewhere alone, that you'd only really seen crowded, almost to the degree of being overwhelming.

Yet, over time, it felt quite peaceful. I remember the smoke breaks that I took in the dead of winter with no one to keep me company quite fondly. Taking a stroll in the campus with the chilling winds keeping me awake whenever I felt my eyes closing just the tiniest bit.

Yet, what started as a finals week strategy to get a place to sit, turned into a necessity when I started working at Tesla. I had to keep with the Pacific time zone and my workday started right around the time that everyone else's was ending. Istanbul is ten hours ahead of California, so a meeting at nine in the morning there was a meeting at seven in the evening for me, and the real work usually started after that. I'd go to my classes during the day and work through the night, and the library after midnight stopped being somewhere I went during finals week. It became where I spent most of my nights.

I got to know that place at hours most people never see it. I knew which lights stayed on all night, which seats were closest to an outlet, and how the sky over the Black Sea started turning grey a little before sunrise. Some nights I'd push code, step outside for a cigarette and just stand there in the cold for a while, not thinking about anything. I don't think I've ever felt as alone or as calm as I did on those walks.

Most nights I'd finish somewhere around three or four in the morning, and some days I had a lesson at 8:30. That left me about four hours, and I didn't trust myself with them. I was convinced that if I let myself sleep anywhere comfortable, my body would take the full eight hours whether I had them or not. So when I was done, I'd walk out past the empty seats, cross the campus one more time in the wind, and fall asleep in my car in the campus parking lot.

Istanbul gets bitterly cold in the winter, and a parked car doesn't hold on to much warmth. I'd wake up in the middle of the night shivering, pull the blankets I kept in the car a little tighter, and try to get back whatever sleep I had left before class. At some point the blankets stopped being enough, and my mom ended up buying me a sleeping bag as a New Year's present. I know how dramatic that sounds. It's still exactly how I spent my final year.

When I graduated, I thought I'd finally get to sleep in a bed at normal hours like everyone else. Then I moved to California, and the clocks flipped. Now, when I'm up late working, it's morning in Istanbul, and the library I used to have all to myself is starting to fill up again.

It turns out I never really got rid of the problem. My employees work on Pacific time and my interns work on Turkish time, so someone is always either just starting their day or just finishing it. They used to say the sun never set on the British Empire; lately I've been joking that it never sets on Avernsys either. Two days a week, I set an alarm for three in the morning so I can join my interns' meeting in the middle of their afternoon. It's dark, everything outside is quiet, and for a few minutes it feels just like walking over to the library after midnight.

I don't have that library anymore, or the wind, or the smoke breaks with nobody around, and I don't hate any of this. I liked being alone at night back in college, probably more than I should have. But it became much better once I had people I care about with me, even if it's online, on Zoom, from the other side of the world. I'm still awake when everyone around me is asleep. I'm just not the only one anymore.