My powers:
It is now 8:30 a.m. Ask me to stay awake until 8:30 a.m. tomorrow and it wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, it might be nice to have some quiet time to work on some projects. Ask me to stay up until 8:30 p.m. tomorrow and I might be a little more pressed, might have to drink a coke or two, but it wouldn’t be too hard.
I never feel tired at night. I wrote all but one of my papers in college (up to 25 pages) the night before they were due, but remained on the honor roll at UC Berkeley. Need a safe drive home late at four in the morning? I’m there for you. In some respects, I feel more awake at night. The world seems quiet and peaceful. Smaller somehow.
My struggles:
I’ve been like this since childhood. So for every day that I can remember, getting out of bed has been the hardest task of the day. Doesn’t matter if I’ve had 5 hours sleep or 8 hours. If an alarm goes off, I’m miserable. I had to sleep through at least one class a day in high school. My preferred method of getting up back then was to count down from 10 and then push myself out of bed onto the floor so I wouldn’t be tempted to get back in. I’m 32 now, work 8-5 and I’ve survived a baby who made me bone tired for over a year. Things are a little better. But I still don’t really feel awake until the afternoon.
*I never feel tired at night. * I don’t yawn at eleven o’ clock and head off to bed. I’m reading! Or downloading music! Or watching a movie. I have no urge to go to bed – I’m indulging in all my leisure activities. At some point, I just have to make the conscious decision that if I don’t go to bed now, I’m going to be even more miserable tomorrow morning. Luckily, I’ve trained myself to fall asleep easily (spent years in bed as a youngster, unable to stop my brain from racing), but I still struggle to force myself into bed.
I know, I know. Get a night job! Yeah, I did that for a while and never saw my girl or my friends. It’ll get easier! Yes, it has. Slightly. But it’s nowhere near easy. This culture is all about that early worm – I’m forced to conform to some degree. When I’ve told morning people about my condition, they treat me with barely concealed disdain. Like it’s all in my head or some petty form of juvenile rebellion. It seems like morning people are kind of admired for all their energy and perkiness and we’re just the lazy dregs of society. We’re just looking for a little understanding.
No, they don’t. And I’ve done the morning thing, worked it for a year or so, and it sucked. I felt like a zombie. Now I’m hoping to get a job with a 6pm-2am shift. Ohpleaseohplease!
I suffer from the same affliction. I despise having to get out of bed when I wake up. It seems that no matter hopw long I actually slept for, my body doesn’t want to get out of bed until noon. Problem is, my mind almost always awkes me up at 7 AM (there’s what twelve years of schoolin’ does to ya’.) So I wake up at 7, don’t need to be up until 9, and in trying to get back to sleep and then waking up again, I lost at least another potential hour of sleep.
I like doing work at night. It’s easier for me. I cannot function properly in the morning unless I have been up a couple hours. I’m still in college right now, so it’s not that big a problem. But once I get a job (hopefully that will happen in May, since that’s when I graduate,) this could be a real problem. Having to get up at 6 AM five days out of the week? Ack! It’s practically impossible for me to even think about going to bed before 11 PM. Even if I force myself to go to bed at 10, let’s say, I will lie there nad not fall asleep until at least 11 or 12, so I might as well stay up until then anyways, right?
Man, “morning people” have it so much easier, it seems. I suppose that, in theory, a second or third shift job might be nice, but then, as mentioned, trying to have a normal social life while doing that sucks.
Amen, brother! AMEN! I’m in the same boat as you. I wish I could take a night job, but my job is just too good to pass up (besides, I can come in at 11:00am, which beats the hell out of 8:00am or worse). Morning people are the hands and fingers of the devil himself, and I’m sick of their scorn! They look down their noses at me because I don’t get out of bed until noon on weekends, calling me “lazy” in that smug way unique to morning people, yet they go to bed at unthinkable hours, like 9:30pm, and I think they’re out of their effin’ minds.
Don’t get me started. I mean, really. Don’t get me started.
I uses to stay up a lot longer when I was younger. Over the years I have found myself rising earlier and enjoying the quiet and rising of the day. A job working the 2nd shift from 3:00 to 11:00 is perfect. No alarm clock needed and you can stay up late. If you have kids then all things change.
I’m a rare bird, I suppose. I’m a morning person who was a night owl. Seriously. My biggest problem in college was getting up in time to catch lunch in the dining hall. I honestly missed lunch more than a few times - without a big party as an excuse. My brother and sister would brag about how early they got up, with the implication that there was something wrong with me for sleeping in. On road trips, I still get the night shift, because I never just “nod off”.
Now, I think of sleeping until 6:30 as sleeping in. I don’t need an alarm clock to get up. The biggest problem I have is not getting up too early, even on swim days, which require getting up at 4:40 am.
I’m not sure how I changed. It was either having kids, or taking up running. (I started running when we started having kids; I just had to get out of the house.) I run, or swim, early in the morning so that I don’t take time away from the kids. Perhaps doing something mindless and physical would help get you moving in the mornings.
I have the same problem, thought not quite as extreme. My natural cycle is sleep from 2am to 10am. I’m going to a sleep center to try to correct and manage this, along with my insomnia and other sleep problems, and found out that there is actually a name for this: Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome.
I’m a hardcore night person. Luckily, I have the best schedule in the world. I work 1 pm - 11 pm, 7 days on, then 7 days off. I NEVER have to wake up before 11:30! Heaven.
Actually, my biggest problem on my weeks off is making sure my sleep schedule doesn’t gradually shift until it’s really wildly off kilter. If I don’t watch myself, I’ll be staying up until 5 or 6 am without even noticing it.
Oh, and SlowMind? I do exercise, thank you very much. I have no desire to “get myself moving in the morning”. Why should I, when I can be asleep?
Left to my own devices, I naturally sleep around 2 or 3 am and get up around 9a or 10. This is not an issue on the two days when I work noon or 4p til 11p. It is an issue on the two days when I work 7a - 5p. I have to be up at 5 on those days, which is only an 2 or so hours after I usually go to sleep. Those days, I never feel awake until about 10, and I have to take a nap from 5p to 8p or so when I get off work just to feel normal. After I get up at 8p from my nap, I’ll be up again until 3 or 4. Some of my coworkers get up at 6 in the morning on their days off just because. Sick monsters, these people are. I’m dreading the day of my graduation, when I will enter the world of 5 days in a row of 8 - 5 work.
Being an extremem morning person also carries its own inconveniences, you know. People think you’re a wimp–or even worse, that you are snubbing themand making lame excuses–when you decline invitations that will keep you out past nine. And in college parties never started until 9 or 10.
Perhaps worst of all is the weird desire to conceal how early you get up because not-extreme morning people often seem to take it as a snub or an attempt to brag or kiss up or something, when it really is just what is easiest for me. I actively conceal the fact that I am at work a good hour before anyone else–even the other early folk–because the few times it has come up some (though not all) people have had these weird reactions–either a sort of mock-admiration that is undeserved and makes me uncomfortable, or a defensive attitude as if I am attacking their own sleep cycle. When asked I leave it at “early” and move on.
Night owl laboratory biologist here. This is a bad combination, since one must work in a very morning-oriented environment. I’ve found that immediate application of quick and hot shower upon waking helps a great deal. Bedroom has east window and no curtains–this also helps.
I believe you, because I am also a morning person who formerly was a night owl. Up until about 4 or so years ago I could (and would) stay up until 2, 3, 4 am and sleep until noon or later. I think I changed when I moved the last time (to Phoenix). Now if I stay up to midnight it’s a cause for celebration and on the weekends if I sleep until 8 I’m surprised.
But, in my defense, I’m not a perky morning person. I great the day reluctantly and with rancor. I hate HATE perky morning people. First ones against the wall when I’m in charge around here!
Erislover goes to the same McDonalds Drive-thru (on the days he goes for breakfast). I’ve been on the phone with him many times and the woman who hands him the bag is a peppy morning person. I can actually hear her smiling through the damn phone. And hearing her perky "good morning"s and "have a nice day"s, etc. Grrrrr. I told him this morning that no one should ever be that happy that early in the morning. He added, “Especially working at McDonalds”.
I’m neither a morning or night person, really, I just need a certain amount of time for sleep. It doesn’t matter when I go to sleep, as long as it’s for approximately 8 hours. My current schedule has me going to bed at about 1 and waking up at about 9. Back in high school I was going to bed at around 11 and waking up at 7. During the summer months it’s usually around 3 am to noon. The night is fun because everyone’s asleep and while the darkness can sometimes be creepy, it can also be serene and calming. But the morning has its perks too, where the sun is just barely over the horizon and everything has a unique color to it, and it’s too early for people to be up and about, so you can hear the fabled early birds sing their morning songs.
What’s really fun is switching from extreme time zones, so you end up going to bed in the early evening, waking up in the middle of the night, and being able to watch the night turn to day. Sure, we routinely witness day turn to night, but there’s just something special about the other end of the cycle…
I have been a night-owl since childhood (my parents say it started at age 5). I have always found that during the day I feel sleepy, slow and unmotivated. At night I pick up and being to feel better. I am most creative and active in the middle of the night. If I’m forced to stick to a routine, I struggle to wake in the morning, even after 8 or more hours sleep. In eighteen months, I never did adjust to waking at 6am to get to work on time. When left to my own devices I wake late in the day feeling refreshed and ready to go on eight hours of sleep. If I let it get out of hand, I find myself going to bed at 4, 5, 6 or even 7am, but I wake mid afternoon without any trouble, the same time every day.
People call it lazy when you sleep late, and are really fixated on the idea that you have to be awake during daylight hours. I’m just happier and healthier if I sleep during the day and am awake at night.
I’m the same way as cazzle. I love to write, but my best time is between 1-5am and I hit the zone around 2-4am. Left on my own, I gradually drift to going to bed around 4-5am and waking up around 1-2pm.
I so totally hear you. Over Spring Break me, DH and our daughter all fell into a stay-up-most-of-the-night-sleep-till-2pm mode. We can’t help it.
I worry about my kid. I feel like a bad mom for letting her stay up so late but it simply works better for us if her sleep schedule is similar to ours! She was BORN a night owl. What am I gonna do when she starts school?
