![]() ![]() Young has worked night shifts on and off since the late 1990s he prefers the peace of night, but that preference is sometimes mistaken for social anxiety or depression. (He didn’t feel comfortable talking on the phone.) “I don’t have any ill will towards people, it’s just exhausting to me.” John Young, a 41-year-old network engineer living in Hammonton, New Jersey, told me he’s “more than happy” living a fairly solitary life. “I’ve tried to hold down day jobs, but I couldn’t handle waking up early, rushing to work, and most of all just … being around people all the time,” Chris Hengen, a 26-year-old nighttime security guard living in Spokane Valley, Washington, told me via email. But the nocturnal people I spoke with feel they don’t need much interaction at all. Deprived of it, people’s physical and mental health tends to decline. I talked to people who painted me a magical picture of their nighttime world: of exquisite, profound solitude of relief of escape.Īccording to most psychologists, humans are inherently social creatures contact with others isn’t just a want-it’s a need. ![]() They do this because of the isolation, not in spite of it. ![]() But some of them want this very much-enough to seek out those night shifts, to train themselves to wake in the dark. Some of them have to they have sleep disorders, or night-shift jobs. As the sun rises, these nocturnal people settle down to sleep. In this parallel universe, there are rarely crowds, nor traffic, nor lines no awkward shuffling around other shoppers in the grocery aisle, no run-ins with neighbors or cacophony of email notifications. They go to work, drive around, run errands at 24-hour stores. It might even feel like the whole world is drifting off with you.īut out in that dark night, while most people are fast asleep, there’s a whole world of people who are wide awake. Maybe you hear cars honking in the street, or voices from the other side of your apartment wall, or your partner snoring beside you maybe it’s quiet. You slip under the covers and turn out the light. ![]()
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