Lullaby, and Good Morning
I have horrible sleep habits. I have always been a bad sleeper and never kept a regular schedule. Growing up, I remember listening to my dad watching late movies on TV, unable to sleep. The worst part of my sleeping patterns is that when I’m completely exhausted, I will fall asleep early and then wake up around 4 a.m., unable to go back to sleep. This starts the cycle all over again, of wanting to go to sleep right about the time I’m supposed to be getting up, starting the day and working.
I recently saw a segment on 60 minutes recently that discussed the importance of getting enough sleep. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, this report lists all the health problems you can have as a result of not getting enough sleep. However, my problem is really not getting enough sleep, but not having a reasonable sleep schedule. I function best late at night and that is when I feel creative, motivated and have the most energy. I get the least amount done early in the morning and spend a lot of mornings realizing that I have gotten very little accomplished. My attention span is very short in the morning and I have a hard time concentrating and focusing.
Around 9 p.m., no matter how tired I am, I start to feel a new burst of energy and feel ready to start a new day. I could easily work 5 or 6 hours, and go to sleep around 4 or 5 a.m. The problem with this schedule is that it does not coordinate with getting anything accomplished with another human being. Therefore, I think I have to face the obvious: I am a vampire.
I envy shift workers who can work the night shift, arrive home around 6 a.m., unwind, and go to bed and sleep the day away. My problem is that I have never had a job where I can keep this sort of schedule. My son is on spring break this week and I thought I would at least be able to sleep until I woke up, but my phone rang at 7 a.m. on my first day off from someone in a panic with a work-related question.
I have really tried to get on the same schedule as everyone else and it will work for awhile. Then the day will come where I will wake up around 2 a.m., unable to sleep, and stay up until I get sleepy, which is usually about 15 minutes before the alarm is about to ring.
Is it possible that some people are just not “day people?” I want to growl at people who get up at 5 a.m., make a pot of coffee, read the paper, and start their day, feeling refreshed and productive. I have had several people suggest sleeping pills or over-the-counter sleep aids, but I don’t like the feeling they give me. I still wake up in the middle of the night, but with a hangover.
I’m starting to wonder if this might be hereditary. My father has always kept weird hours and now my son is doing the same thing. I enforce a strict bedtime during the school week, but on the weekends, I am more lenient and flexible. However, now that the teenage years have approached, I have to tell him to go to bed no later than 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. Otherwise, he would stay up all night and never force himself to go to bed. While some of this behavior can just be chalked up to being a teenager, I wonder if my habits or rubbing off on him, or he has inherited my horrible sleeping habits.
As I get older, I have finally realized that some people are just more productive later in the day and there’s really no way to change that. I will just continue to drink lots of coffee when I have 8 a.m. meetings and hope I don’t get cancer from not sleeping from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. every night.
Vive la différence.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:27 am
I’ve had the exact same sleep ‘problem’ all my life as well. It caused various complications in school and work life over the years including about a 10-year stretch where my best companion was vodka on the rocks in the evenings to get tired.
Then I saw something on tv also- I don’t remember whether it was PBS or 60 minutes (I’ve had a memory problem all my life too ;-)) which told of scientific research proposing that the human species was never meant to sleep during an 8-hour period out of every 24 such as today in the modern business world.
Rather, mankind’s evolution as a nomad predator (and food source), among other prehistory animalistic instincts, dictated a more random sleep schedule. One of sleeping shorter periods when the body needed it, night or day, on demand and whenever time and safety was available. More like a cat does today I would say.
I’ve always been a big fan of afternoon naps, and since I freelance and work out of the house my ‘odd’ sleep habits work much better now. ALthough it does drive my wife, who sleeps ‘normally’ absolutely insane.
March 21st, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Same here. You’ve described me, except that our hours of going to bed and getting up are different. I’m not going to reveal mine, but they are just as unusual.