I remember one particular one a few decades ago, where I was feverishly (pun intended) trying to achieve something with XML, only it being a fever dream, nothing of it made sense, so I was wracking my brain for nonsense those entire hours.
(tangent) Also, please forgive my question which may seem impolite but I really want to know: why did you type "whilst" instead of "when" or "while"? Have you ever said the word "whilst" out loud, in a normal conversation? More letters, an extra (half)syllable, zero meaning or nuance added, I just don't get it. I wonder this every time I see it, mean no disrespect and would be grateful for a straightforward reply. (/tangent)
I find that I have two personalities and my writing/text personality is much more sagacious and better spoken (if that makes sense??)
Whilst to me is like being in the midst of something, not just that it is happening somewhere. It seems to have more specificity than 'while'.
"Whilst boarding the train..." Is going to be followed by something personal or hypothetical.
However, I think I'm prone to overlaying a gloss on words that isn't necessarily shared.
As I intimated 'whilst' I would use in philosophical contexts, arguments where there are alternative hypotheticals, say. "Whilst it might be said...".
Most likely it's just subconsciously learned, a product of native/mother tongue learning.
Would be interesting to see the word vectors extracted from literature/media moving over time and across contexts in order to make a comparison.