I overslept again today. Not in the same classic sense as yesterday, where I slept through my alarm and missed my class like your typical college student. No, today I woke up around 8 AM to realize that I’d slept for a solid twelve hours. I’d gotten into bed to relax around 7:45 only to doze… slowly… off… and wake up the next morning feeling different. Honestly, I wish I could say this didn’t happen often. Maybe not quite to the extent it did today, but when I don’t have reason to be up early, the urge to sleep and stay sleeping takes over no matter what.

Fatigue has been a problem I’ve faced for years now, beginning realistically when I’d just started high school. I’ve struggled daily with managing to balance the amount of pitiful restless sleep I get vs. how tired I’ll feel all day, no matter what. Four hours? Tired. Twelve? Exhausted. Six to eight? Perfect, but am I still sleepy by seven? Naturally. There’s an amalgam of issues at work when it comes to my sleeping problems. Anxiety keeping me awake, depression putting me to sleep, constantly waking up and having to fall back asleep even when I manage. Drinking coffee both helps and hurts my efforts, but to sum up, I’d essentially given up on trying to achieve a sleep schedule like a normal human being.

Until today.

Yesterday, I slept through one class and the other was cancelled. As a direct result, I was left with a full day to do whatever I wished. I had mentioned wanting something productive or profound to come out of it. No such thing did. What did come out of it was that one blog post and some dishes getting done. Other than that, all I have to show for having an entire day at my disposal is a finished season of Shameless and a whooooole lot less … weed.

And therein, I realized, lies the problem.

I’ve smoked weed on the regular (mostly daily, if I’m home) for about six months now. Before that, I limited my use to the occasional smoke when hanging out with friends or attending a party. A few friends of mine managed to get me into the more daily habit, and for quite a while, especially after coming home from my extremely stressful job, smoking marijuana was working for me. It wasn’t ever a perfect solution, but it would help. But yesterday, after crafting my blog entry and getting out of bed, I remember thinking to myself, “Seems like a wake-and-bake kind of day.”

I think I baked the day away, and I don’t want it to happen again.

For a while, I was fine with occasional lazy stoner days like that. They were a necessary lapse of mindless relaxation in a far too stressful world, but I’m starting to come into my own. I need to focus on my life and education. I doubt I’ll stop the occasional recreational smoke, but I don’t feel like I need to rely on weed as a safety blanket anymore. I never considered myself addicted. Rather, I was dependent. I no longer feel as though I need to depend on it.

I am a firm believer that even just lazing around and watching T.V. all day can still be meaningful, or even productive, as long as it makes you happy. Yesterday, none of it felt that way. I feel as though the weed may have dulled my senses in a way, because I wasn’t unhappy. I just wasn’t feeling much at all, and I don’t want that right now. Not when the feelings to be had are so beautiful and vibrant. I sacrificed my rainbow of emotions for a greyscale couch and television screen. In the past, everything was greyscale, so why did it matter?

Now, I don’t want to miss out on the chromatic life I can live. Even if I’d spent yesterday doing the same sort of things, I’m not sure I would have felt so empty were I sober. I figure it’s about time for a break. This doesn’t make me hate marijuana, nor its healing qualities. To be honest with you, I wish my mom would smoke more for her rheumatoid arthritis. I just value the emotional impact of so-called “meaningless” activity, and if weed’s diminishing the value, I simply don’t need the weed.

There’s a lot I could say on the concept of “nothing.” A girl whose name was nothing helped shape me into who I am today, for better or for worse. But today, I want to remind the world that days where you do nothing are not necessarily wasted. If you relaxed, if you were happy, then what was the harm?

Almost everyone I know my age values “productivity” above all else. If one does not do something that they consider productive in a day, that day can leave a foul taste in their mouth and feel useless. Worthless. Wasted. Those days add up, and pile slowly into the characteristic “lazy dreamer” attitude millennials are known to have. In no time at all, we feel awful because we’re so unproductive. “Why even try?” “I’m fucked.” “The world is against me.”

“I’m a useless, worthless, waste.”

So maybe I feel like I wasted yesterday, but I need to remind myself; I learned from this. Based on my strange experience I decided what my next step towards a better future was going to be. Being so unproductive yesterday only led to this revelation today. Everything, in its own right, has a purpose. You just have to seek it out.