I got up at 3am to take it out of the press!
Welcome to the forum, Jessie.
You're on the right track. If a recipe says to brine it for so many hours and the end of that falls at a time when you'll be asleep, you'd better wake up and tend to the task at hand. I have done that many times.
I'm going to make a general statement and say that you should set some time aside to make your cheese: ripening, renneting, floc'ing, cutting, resting, cooking, stirring, draining, milling, moulding, pressing, weighing, brining, drying, schmiering/waxing/vacuum-bagging, and aging.
Actually, a typical make session for me might be 6-8 hours making a cheese. From "ripening" up through "moulding", I expect to be there tending to whatever the milk wants me to do. When the curds finally get into the mould, then I can rest while the press does its thing. Then I'm "on-call" when the cheese goes into the brine, concluding that process after a specified time. From that point, the cheese will be out to dry and then be protected, either by schmier, wax, or vacuum-bag.
I don't know if that's what you were asking about. Don't just leave the curds to play among themselves. Deal with them.
-Boofer-