Who wants an alarm clock that enforces social normativity?
So, I have an alarm clock app on my phone, which I use the 10-12 times a year that I actually want to wake up on time for something. I'm pretty staunchly about getting all the sleep I can, and I've pretty much built my life around rarely having to be awake at a certain time.
I chose this one because the pro version of it was free, but then I had to reset my phone and the app store lost that information, or I screwed something up, and since then I've had the free version. And the ads are a little annoying, but not annoying enough to prompt me to bother to find and learn a different app. I know how to set this one and make it play the song I want. ("The Ballad of Fred Noonan" by Antje Duvekot if you're curious what I wake up to. I like the song in general but the opening crescendo is really nice for an alarm.)
CC0 photo fromPexels
But recently it has also added a really annoying little tactic: every Sunday night it sends me a notification. Do you know, it asks, that you have set no alarms for tomorrow? Gosh, yes, alarm clock, I do know. Do you know why? Because Monday means nothing to me.
I imagine the alarm clock being shocked by this. After all, it doesn't send me this notification on any other days. Surely, it must think, you have to get up in the morning. After all, it's Monday, the start of the work-week, when everyone subjects themselves to unspeakable horrors in order to fulfill their programmed cultural expectation. And it's my job to make sure you face those unspeakable horrors, says the alarm clock app.
After all, it's just been the weekend, and who knows what people might do without notification that the weekend is over? They might, thinks the alarm clock, act like it's the weekend all the time. They might choose not to go to work at all. Without me they might even get enough sleep, and with enough sleep who knows what choices they would make? And the alarm clock has a point. With enough sleep, people might just choose to overturn the whole system.
I'm not really sure why my alarm clock is a Fascist, except that it seems to be sort of in vogue in certain parts at the moment. But the thing is, as much as it wants power over me, it can't have it. Notification or no notification, I'll be sleeping tomorrow until I can't anymore. And the rest of the world can deal.
Maybe someday you'll join us, and the world will sleep as one. That's what John Lennon said, right? I'm pretty sure that song was about sleeping.
This is like the best post ever.
Damn it, I have to set my alarm for tomorrow.
Yep definitely was.
John spent a lot of time awake for how much he loved pajamas.
I'm am convinced that is what he meant.
I have a love/hate kind of relationship with alarms: I use them a lot to remind me to taking my medication whenever I need to take it, or to make a call, finish a chore, make a transaction or even find something.. basically to remind me to do things I should probably do inmmediately but don't feel like it at them moment haha. BUT when it comes to the wake-up-alarm (which btw has an all caps, spanish swearing name) I just hate the sound of it and hate the fact that I have to use it to wake up "on time"... I never do anyway, I hit the snooze button like 5 times.
There's this lovely creative fugue state that comes when I'm snoozing and snoozing and snoozing, sometimes, where I'm somewhere on the edge of waking and dreaming without the annoying dead-sleep part that usually comes in the between them. A lot of my best projects have come out of those moments.
My snoozing states are always a haze to me hahah
Well I let my biological clock and my sense of urgency wake me up every morning. Any artificial means of notifying is not encourage. Do you know how it feels to be told be a thing every morning that you need to wake up?! It doesn't even to know how stressful the previous day was, the ordeal you had to face, no sir, it just wakes you up, get up lazy man you need to get going.
Well I choose to take my chances and if it happens that I'm late for classes everyday then so be it! My body needs those extra minutes (hours) to recuperate and I won't deny it such luxury.
Back when I worked a 9-5 (or 11-7, or whatever), I used to have to set SIX alarms. Not six alarms on one phone. I mean, I had two clocks next to the bed, one across the room that shot off a helicopter piece you had to find and reattach to make it stop, one out in the living room, and a couple more on the phone, wherever I had left it. I still managed to turn them all off, go back to bed, and not remember any of it some days. My body has no rhythm, it cycles around and flips upside down and always has, and once I am out (which takes hours), I sleep like the dead.
So you can imagine attendance has always been my problem...
This is familiar. It's why I don't do that routine anymore.
Ha ha, you should have entered this into comedyopenmic. I'm sorry your alarm clock app is being a pain.
Welp I didn't need my alarm clock this morning either. My daughter rolled over and started snoring in my ear at around 5 a.m. lol.
fantastically written. I got here to late to upvote you but i am now following. I hope more work of this nature follows :)