You want to know how we celebrate holidays in my line of work? Well, WordPress, today you asked a Dream Technician.

Once a year, on the longest day of the year – June 21st – there’s Insomniac Independence Day. Fitting, isn’t it? 

You think your 9-to-5 is rough? Try being on call when an entire city decides to stay awake for 24 hours straight. 

That’s right, once a year we celebrate our “freedom from sleep” by pushing our bodies to the limit. 

It’s stupid, it’s dangerous, and it’s my job to keep it from turning into a complete disaster.

I start my day like any other – a cup of mushroom coffee and a quick check of my Sleep Deprivation Detector. 

It looks like a cheap plastic watch you’d get from a cereal box, but this little gadget is the only thing standing between us and a city-wide psychotic break.

As I step outside, the streets are buzzing with that manic energy only sleep-deprived people can muster.

You’ve seen it before – that wild look in someone’s eyes when they’re running on fumes and determination. 

Now imagine that, but everywhere. It’s like someone opened the gates of Bedlam and gave all the inmates triple espressos.

My first stop? The local diner. Sounds ordinary, right? 

Wrong. 

During Insomniac Independence Day, it becomes ground zero for caffeine addicts and amateur philosophers. I squeeze past a guy loudly explaining his theory on how toasters are actually sentient, and make my way to the counter.

“Any trouble brewing?” I ask the barista, tapping my Sleep Deprivation Detector meaningfully. She nods towards a booth in the corner where a group of programmers are furiously coding on napkins, muttering about ‘hacking the sleep matrix.’

I sigh and approach their table. 

“Alright, code monkeys,” I say.

“Step away from the napkins. The only thing you’re allowed to hack today is your way through that stack of pancakes. Trust me, it’s safer for everyone if you stick to syrup algorithms.”

They grumble, but comply. Crisis averted. For now.

But here’s the kicker, the part that keeps me up at night (pun absolutely intended): this whole holiday? It’s a test. A sick, twisted experiment to see how far we can push ourselves before we break.

You ever wonder why our society is so obsessed with productivity? 

Why we wear our exhaustion like a badge of honor? 

It’s because somewhere, someone is watching. Measuring. Waiting to see just how much we can take before we snap. They’re probably sitting in some cushy office, sipping tea and—

My Detector screams like a banshee with a stubbed toe. Damn it.

“Sorry, gotta run,”

“I’ve got a group of investment bankers trying to trade stocks with a ouija board.”

The conspiracy theory will have to wait.

After all, in my line of work, the only thing more dangerous than too little sleep is too much thinking.