picture a Sunday night.

picture a Sunday night laying in bed, surrounded by fresh, clean sheets. The air conditioner is humming and it smells like detergent and shampoo from an evening shower. 

I'm reading an art book and an electrical engineering book. When I read the art book, I think about the Patreon I'll launch soon. I analyze the technique in the digital brushstrokes, and lose myself in the imagination of the fantasy worlds the artist painted. When I read the engineering book, I learn about circuit analysis and the behavior of electrons. 

I check the clock. 8:45 PM. It will be lights-out soon, to make sure I'm well-rested for tomorrow. My novels are progressing nicely, and I know I'll be able to start submitting my work to agents soon. I am working through my gaming backlog. I work on personal projects and Leetcode every night, but for fun and for the future, not for necessity. 

There is no 6 PM deployment that could go until 8 PM or 12 AM or all night. It's just a weird memory of a time that once was, a time where dreams felt far away and I felt lost. But I don't feel like that anymore. 

My world is dark, cool, and quiet. I put my books down and picture the following scene, the same one I've fallen asleep to since I was a freshman in college: 

a glass ceiling, a cabin in the woods in the mountains that overlooks the sea. a sky full of stars, moons, galaxies, and lanes of spaceships that are bound to faraway worlds. pine trees, a garden of giant roses, and a vast ocean beyond a marble balcony. the balcony has telescopes, a porch swing, and a crackling firepit. the only sounds are the babbling of a brook, the whoosh of dragon wings, the song of crickets, and the rustling of the aspens. and there is love, love, so much of it. 

I lie somewhere between that and reality and the world dissolves into rest.