The City That Never Sleeps Inside Your Head

The city was already awake when you weren’t.
Neon signs flickered against the grey morning drizzle, the rain whispering against the window like a restless thought you couldn’t shake off.
Somewhere outside, a tram screeched to a halt, and for a moment, you wondered if it ever really moved at all — or if it just looped the same route like you did every day.

You wake up at 7:00 a.m.
Without thinking, your hand reaches for the phone, muscle memory, like lighting a cigarette in an old noir film.
A flood of notifications hits the screen. Messages, tags, unread emails, a new urgent announcement in a group chat.

“Sigh… not again.”

Your voice is barely audible under the low hum of rain and electricity.

You scroll. Someone just launched a new product. Another person “made it.”
A thread is going viral. A dozen people argue about it, another dozen dissect those arguments.
You’re watching it all from your bed, half-awake, half-drained, while your day hasn’t even begun.
Somewhere in between those messages, you start to feel like you’re missing out on life itself.

You drag yourself to the shower. Steam fogs the mirror, but your reflection stays sharp enough to remind you: you’re still here, still tired.
You brush your teeth, check your phone again. Ten more notifications. Twitter.
A flame war between two “influential voices” in your field.

You tell yourself it’s research, that you need to keep up.
But you know the truth: it’s curiosity mixed with fear. Fear of not knowing what everyone else does.
You scroll, reading quote tweets and half-baked takes. Your mind burns out before your day even begins.

It’s 8:30 a.m.
You pour a quick cup of coffee, its warmth doing nothing to soothe the cold pit of information overload already forming in your gut.
You take a sip, open Twitter again, a reflex. Another reply, another argument.
Someone’s furious. You are too, though you don’t know why. The caffeine and outrage mix into something that feels like purpose, but isn’t.

Then you see the clock.

“Damn. 9:05.”

You throw on a hoodie, hiding the fact you’re still in your pajamas, and log into your team meeting.
You smile at the camera, a ghostly digital grin, and hope they won’t call your name just yet.

When they do, your notes are ready.
You mumble something about fixing that nasty bug, the one from the report yesterday.
But as the day unfolds, so does your exhaustion. Another issue pops up.
Another layer of complexity you didn’t have time to read about.

“Ah right… that new feature the team shipped last week,”
you mutter, trying to sound calm.

You bookmarked the documentation, you remember.
Or maybe it’s buried somewhere under fifty new tabs.

By noon, your coffee is gone. Your eyes sting.
The rain outside has turned heavier, tapping the window like a metronome marking your descent into another endless day.

“Hard to follow everything and still do your job, huh, mate?”
No one says it. But you wish someone did.

The hours melt away. Screens flicker.
The city outside glows brighter as the sky darkens.
Another ten-hour workday dissolves into the blur of neon reflections on your monitor.
You order takeout again because cooking requires energy, and you spent yours on things you can’t remember.

Your phone buzzes.
Your family. Your friends. They’re asking if you’re okay, if you’ll come by this weekend.
You silence the phone, tell yourself they don’t understand the grind.

“I need to stay sharp. I need to keep up.”

But the silence that follows feels heavy.
You can almost hear your own pulse echo against the walls.
To numb it, you open Twitter. Then Netflix. Maybe TikTok.
The noise rushes in like rain through a cracked window.

You tell yourself tomorrow will be different.
But you know it won’t.

Tomorrow you’ll wake up at 7:00 a.m. again, reach for your phone again, scroll through the same kind of noise again.
A new flame war. A new update. A new reason to feel like you’re falling behind.
The city will still be raining, and you’ll still be chasing meaning through glass screens and pixelated opinions.

And yet, somewhere in that loop, a thought slips through.
Maybe it’s not the world that’s too loud.
Maybe you’ve just forgotten how to be quiet.

You turn off your phone.
The room falls silent except for the hum of rain and the soft glow of neon bouncing off wet streets below.
You sit there for a moment, feeling something you haven’t felt in a long time: stillness.
The kind that doesn’t demand your attention or your opinion. Just your presence.

You breathe in.
It’s strange how the quiet feels heavier at first, how your mind protests, desperate for another hit of stimulation.
But beneath that noise, there’s something softer waiting.
The whisper of calm, the steady rhythm of rain, the quiet hum of a city that no longer asks anything from you.

You stand, walk to the window, and open it.
Cold air rushes in, the smell of rain mixing with the faint metallic scent of the city.
Somewhere below, a streetlight flickers, catching reflections in a puddle.
You watch as a couple walks by under a single umbrella, laughing about something small and unimportant.
For a moment, you envy them. Then you realize, maybe you don’t have to.

You make a decision, small but real.
Tomorrow, when you wake up, you’ll leave the phone on the table.
You’ll make coffee in silence.
You’ll look out the window, maybe even step outside to feel the rain before the world wakes up.

Because maybe peace isn’t found in escaping the storm,
but in learning to stop drowning in it.
Maybe it’s about choosing what truly deserves your attention,
what genuinely adds meaning to your days.

You smile faintly.
The rain starts to fade.
The city exhales with you.

And for the first time in a long while,
you feel like the noise isn’t winning anymore.