Hulloo, darling dears!
How farest thou?
I hit the brick wall of mental exhaustion today while at the office (I think it’s a reaction to the Tdap shot I got yesterday) and sat there almost drooling while finding myself unable to compose a coherent thought. So I came home and did a bit of reading and am valiantly trying to stay awake for another fifteen minutes so I can Go To Bed At A Decent Hour, which is my new key to health and happiness and productivity.
You see, being a theatre person and a genetic night owl (mom and dad were both major night owls), my world has always been ordered around going to bed long after midnight and getting up in the morning whenever I needed to: sometimes early, sometimes late. This program worked for a very long time until it didn’t work any more. Now I find that I simply don’t have a good day if I don’t get to bed before midnight. If I take an afternoon nap (a cherished tradition), I can’t get to sleep before midnight. So, no nap.
This is no small transition for me, and I am actually foregoing auditioning for a dream role this spring in order to cement the new habit. I know that if I get into another rehearsal process, it will be bedtime at 1:00 AM again, and I’m focused on health right now. As I have written before, my body totally confuses tiredness for hunger, and I’m hoping that I can undo some of that haywire programming.
I’m kind of fascinated by sleep patterns — always have been. What are yours?
Time for bed!
Please keep us informed about how this goes. I have made repeated commitments to go to bed earlier and get up earlier (the goal being about 10:30 p.m. to about 7:00 a.m.) and I just keep NOT doing it! I’m much more likely to go to bed around 11:30-midnight, read for a while, and turn off the light 1/2 hour later. Waking up around 8 to 8:30 (depending on how dark it is). I find it difficult to ignore that Puritan voice inside my head, telling me that it’s slothful to sleep so late in the morning, and I’m retired for heaven’s sake! For me it’s less of a health issue and more about guilt. Weird. Curious to hear what your other readers say.
Oh yes. Oh yes.
I am another incorrigible night owl. I have always been. It has taken me well into adulthood to accept the fact that I need eight hours of sleep, and that getting those eight hours of sleep from 1:00 to 9:00 am does not make me a morally inferior person. (I live with a habitual morning lark who is up by 5am as often as not, and tends to zonk out in the early evening.)
And. Next week I am starting a student chaplaincy position (extended CPE) that requires me to show up, looking alert and professional, three days a week at 8:00 in the morning…. in a town that’s over an hour’s drive from where I live. So I gotta be in the car, put together, and rolling at 6:30 in the morning. Which means getting up…. before that.
The things we do for love, eh?
My cunning plan is working, so far. Starting a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been rigorous about setting the alarm 15-20 minutes earlier every couple of days. (Today was 6:10 am. Friday will roll back to 5:50. Monday will roll back to 5:30… which, if I don’t dawdle, will give me enough time to get out the door on time…) 15-20 minutes at a time is about what I can handle without becoming surly, crass and evil B.C. – that’s Before Coffee. After a couple of nights at an earlier wake-up time, I find that my need for eight hours sleep pulls bedtime back as well.
But it does mean rigor – no sleeping in on the weekend, no naps, no all-nighters. I’m really fearing that my first overnight call is going to throw my system into chaos. It’s SO much easier to stay up really late than it is to get up even a little bit early. And the spring time change next month is possibly going to kill me. Because that’s rolling back ANOTHER hour after I just functionally shifted by three or four time zones in a month.
Would love to hear how other people cope with this. Maybe we can all drink our tea/coffee together at unholy o’clock in the morning and squint at the sunrise or something.
I have a jawbone tracker that tracks sleep, and I’ve been surprised to find that I can function and feel good on less sleep than I thought I needed. Having had no luck correcting my bedtime, I’m tinkering with getting up earlier to help my productivity. Curious about what your dream role is! [Mama Rose in “Gypsy!” Very demanding! I just can’t go for it right now. – PB]
Through my twenties I was a complete night-owl… I even worked overnights for 4 years and usually stayed on that schedule on my days off. Somewhere in the last 7 years, that changed… these days I (mostly) turn screens off at 9:00 and go to bed by 9:30 or 10:00, and I’m up by 5 or 5:30 (thanks to my dog… 6:30 would be better, but he’s an early riser)! On weekends I always tell myself I’m going to stay up late and sleep in late, but I inevitably stick to the same schedule.
My sleep has become less consistent as I head towards menopause which is an adjustment. I too am surprised that I do better than I expect after a lousy night sleep but I try to not make it a habit. The hardest thing for me was admitting to myself and others that I need 8-9 hours a night, that’s just what my body requires and naturally does without an alarm clock. I’ve finally learned to stop apologizing for it and surrender to the deliciousness that is sleep.
My body seems to naturally want to be awake for a couple hours right smack dab in the middle of every night. On weekends, I can do that, and just read or write for a couple hours, then back to bed. But I work weekdays and start at 7:30 a.m., so that doesn’t work unless to want to go to bed at 7:30 p.m. Which I don’t. I’m looking forward to retirement (in 20 years), when I can do what my body wants to, seven days a week.