I’m definitely a night owl. Last semester I felt like I had a low-grade virus because I was getting up early every single morning and I just could not wake up, no matter how hard I tried. I walked around like a zombie. Left to my own devises, I’ll stay up until 4ish. When I write, I tend to hit my peak times between 9 pm and 3 am. The absolute worst time of a day for me is the afternoon, from about 1 to 5. It’s worse than the morning. I wish I could figure out how to get over that slump, cuz I sorta need to do crazy things like work and go to class.
So on vacations and in the summer, I tend to stay up until near dawn, sleep until 2, loaf around the house in the afternoon and swelter in the heat, really wake up by 5 and then put in 12 hours of writing, reading, and chatting.
I shudder to think of what’ll happen to me when I have to enter the real world…
Being a nightowl works really well for me, but I had to work pretty hard to get it to. I always knew I wasn’t going to be able to deal with a 9-5 (or godforbid, 8-5!) job, so I became a psychotherapist. Since I’m in private practice, I make my own schedule and start working anywhere from noon to 3:00pm and then see people to 7-7:30pm. Then I work from home as a freelance commercial artist to fill in. Sometimes I draw in my studio til midnite or so, and then lurk around here til 2:00 am. Apparently, I don’t like someone else telling me when I need to be somewhere! Also, I never get stuck in traffic, because I’m never on the road during rush hour. Really, the world should have more flexible scheduling - it occurs to me that I also don’t waste a lot of time in crowded grocery stores, etc., because I can go at “off” times. Of course, I have no offspring. That would definitely throw a wrench in the works!
I also don’t need much sleep - about 6-7 hours.
I’ll bet this thread will be dead early tomorrow morning!(only to pick up again around midnight or so :)).
Early to bed
Early to rise
Makes a bod
Healthy,
Wealthy
And wise.
Come on all you so-called ‘night-people’, it’s all a matter of training yourself to sleep at the proper time and wake at the proper time. You want to make yourselves victims of some type of diurnal sleep disorder instead of admitting that you’re just lazy sods who indulge yourselves, both in pursuing your selfish interests late into the night as well as lazily sleeping in under the warm comfort of your feather-bed quilt in the early morn.
I am a super hard core night person. I love my shift. My normal shift is 1915-0815. Thats right, I stay up all night. Love during the summer when I come to work with the sun up, and go home with the sun up, all dark durning work. Even on the days I don’t work I stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning, and get up at 12 or 1 in the afternoon.
Everyone else at work can’t understand why I love my shift so much. Everyone thinks I am nuts. Makes it a bitch to trade days off…
Another night person here. I managed to survive the first 35 years of my life by avoiding 9-5 jobs, being self employed, etc. Then I took a full time job, and it’s very tough. I now live on 4-5 hours of sleep a night, because I CAN’T go to sleep at 11 like my wife does. If I do, I’ll just stare at the ceiling until 2 AM anyway. So for me it’s stay up until 2 or 3, sleep until 7:30, drag my sorry self out of bed, spend the morning feeling miserable, then by the time I get home at night I’m wide awake.
This isn’t doing my health any good, but for the life of me I can’t change it.
When I had absolutely no responsibilities and could sleep and wake when I chose, I found that my natural ‘day’ was about 26 hours. I’d stay up until five AM, sleep until 1PM, then the next night I wouldn’t get to sleep until 7 AM and sleep till 3. Etc. Eventually, i’d work my way right around the clock.
I’m another night owl. I love the night, it’s so quiet. I’m happiest when I can stay up until three or four in the morning. I can force myself to adapt to getting up early if I have to, but I never feel quite awake until late afternoon anyway.
Not to mention, all the good TV is on after 10. I usually watch Nic@Nite until 11, then the Daily Show and adult swim, then The X-Files, and by then it’s 3 and there’s usually a so-bad-it’s-good movie on, or something on TVLand or Nic@Nite…
Another nightcrawler here. If I have absolutely no other obligations and can set my own schedule, I naturally fall asleep around 4am and get up at noon. Sadly, I have a white-collar job with a typical Mon-Fri schedule, and I can’t find an alternative because it would be too disruptive to my social life (marriage plus evening activities). So like everybody else in my situation, I suffer. Oh, how I suffer, moan, bitch, whine, –yawn–.
Pepperlandgirl, you definitely have my T.V. schedule down, except that I go for Nightline in between the Daily Show & the X-Files because I’m old(er). Too bad there are no Buffy reruns, eh?
I used to be a night owl. Heck, for one year of college I would stay up all night about one night a week, and just go to class the next morning like normal. But in my mid- to late-20s my schedule started changing, and now I’m a morning person. I start getting tired around 10 pm or so, I wake up around 5:15 each morning to go to work, early enough that I have plenty of time to get ready slowly, watch the news, and so forth. I even get up around 7 am on weekends.
That’s not to say that I’m a perky type who’s all sunshine and roses in the early hours, but I prefer getting up earlier.
All right, I know this was tongue in cheek, but this is precisely the attitude that gets on my nerves. The belief I’m always running in to is that (A) night people are lazy, (B) we all really secretly want to be day people, and (C) we could do it if we just tried really hard. Wrong, wrong, and wrong! Screw you all!
Another night owl by inclination here. My preferred sleep schedule is about 2 or 3 to 10am. Unfortunately, I’m working an 8-5 job. Blah.
Anyway. I do so love hearing people say “I’ll do that first thing in the morning” like that should be a special privilege. If you ever hear me say I will do something for you first thing in the morning, take it away from me and get someone else to do it. You will like the results better. On the there hand, if I say I’ll do it in the afternoon, you’re safe.
I’m a late morning to 11pm kinda gal, myself. But I once took a graveyard shift job, and I thought it was going to kill me! I’m the lightest sleeper in the world™, and I would come home from that job at 5 or 6am, try to go to bed, and have the hardest time getting any sleep. If it wasn’t the light through my blinds, it was construction or traffic outside my bedroom window, or telephone solicitors, or kids outside playing, or…
Anyway, I feel very sorry for anyone who has to try to get their sleep in the daytime. And for those who work the opposite shift of their natural sleep pattern.
Am I the only night owl who’s married to a morning person?
I have put up with grief from the WryGuy for 15 years now, telling me I should get to bed earlier and wake up earlier. I get up on weekend mornings around ten, and he’s standing over me going “Let’s do this! Let’s do that! Let’s go here! Let’s call them!” and I’m going, “I haven’t even had a bloody cup of coffee yet, get off my back!”
When I suggested to him that he stay up a bit later and sleep in a little, he looked at me all aghast and said, “Well, that’s not how my biological clock works!” I said, “Well, you’ve been after me to change my clock all these years - why is it supposed to be simple for me, when you obviously can’t do it either?”
I worked nights for about 7 years. I remember what it’s like to have your circadian rhythms all messed up. I am by nature a morning person and have been since high school. I don’t miss night work.
If I could just sleep till 9am I’d be fresh as a daisy and never late. But I have to be to work at 8:30. As a result, I spend the majority of my days feeling like crap. Thanks a lot, morning people!
