I’m surprised to see how many people here go to sleep at what I would consider a very early time. 10pm appears pretty early to me. Granted, sometimes I doze off on my sofa around that time, or a little later (I’m getting old). But generally, I’d say that anything before, say, 11pm is really early. (FWIW, ABBA’s “The Day Before You Came” has the first-person narrator give a justification for being in bed by ten, arguing that she needs a lot of sleep).
For myself, I wonder how much is “old habits die hard” - as a kid, 9 was pretty much bedtime, and to this day, it doesn’t feel right if I’m up later than that. I honestly can’t recall the last time I rang in the new year - not much of a party animal.
Back in my pre-retirement days, when I had to more or less conform to the societal norm of sleeping at night and being awake during the day, I would have characterized myself as a night owl, with a preference for staying up late and getting up late. I somehow managed to retain employment throughout my career despite rarely showing up anywhere before noon. I hasten to mention that I worked hard, and often long hours, it’s just that my circadian rhythm was somehow corrupted; I’ve always been a night owl.
Post-retirement, dog ownership kept me to semi-human schedules as the dog needed to be let out, walked, run in the park, etc. Although in the summer I could let him out in the morning and go back to bed. If he wanted to come in, he could open the screen door himself with his snout, although unfortunately he never cared about closing it again behind him.
Now that I’m both retired and unfortunately dog-less, all bets are off regarding bedtime. In general my hours resemble those of Dracula.
Bedtime for me is 10 pm. My alarm goes off at 6:25, but I’m usually awake about 10 or 15 minutes before then. I do like my sleep.
This.
Though I’m not entirely certain it wouldn’t eventually work its way around to 3AM and 11AM, and then 4AM and noon, and so on. I’ve never had a long enough stretch without needed interaction with other people and/or sunlight to find out.
Midnight for me. If I try going to bed earlier, it means I wake up 3-4am, and often can’t get back to sleep. If I stay up much past midnight, I risk insomnia and tossing and turning for another 1-3 hours.
I kept getting up later and later, and I was feeling like I was losing a lot of my day, and that the time I got from staying up later didn’t count (I guess I’m more of a morning person than I thought). Then we had a remodeling project going on, and I had to be up and dressed, at least, by 8:00 am to let them in, so I started getting up at 7:00, and just kept it up since then. I can always hit the snooze button if I want, but mostly I don’t.
I’m pretty much on the same schedule as the OP. Our routine is to watch the news and then maybe the first half of an NBA game or an episode or two of a series we’re watching. By about 8 or 8:30, I’m reading in bed, and likely asleep by 9:30. I’m usually up by 0600 or 0630.
That’s me, pretty much to a tee. Even on my days off, my sleep schedule is largely the same. I say “largely” because the fact I can go to bed sooner on an off day can sometimes manifest itself in the form of hitting the hay an hour earlier.
I love 2nd shift because in my case I’ve always hated waking up early ( dark ), ever since childhood. With my schedule, rare is the day I don’t face the workday feeling resentfulfully unrested, as I did when I worked a day shift schedule.
With work I have a “forced” bedtime, around 10:10pm to catch the latest headlines on the local news. Up at 6:00am. On weekends, no matter how late I stay up I am wide awake by 7:00. 8.5 hours seems to be the ideal amount of sleep time for me.
When I had surgery a few years ago with a 6 weeks off work and no schedule I found I naturally went to bed around 10:30pm and woke up around 7 with no alarm clock.
I think maybe that sentence doesn’t say what you meant. Or else I’m confused.
Well past the edit window, but here it is, retroactively. Rare is the day I ̶d̶o̶n̶’̶t̶ face the workday feeling resentfully un rested. 
It used to be in bed by 10:30, sleeping by 11:30 and up at 6:00. Age and dogs have changed all that. I’m usually in bed by 8:45-9:00, watch something on my tablet and am sleeping by 9:45-10:00. I’m up at 5:00 (no alarm needed) to feed and walk the dogs. For me “sleeping in” is 6:00 and I don’t like it. I’m always thinking what I could have already done if I had gotten up at 5 instead.
I know what you mean - on the very rare occasions that I sleep past 6 - once till almost 7!!! - I feel like I’ve wasted my morning!
I usually get in bad around 10 and read for an hour, turn off the light by 11. On Saturday night, I listen to Saturday Night Jazz until midnight. The night of the switch to DST was a double whammy and it took me a week to catch up. Tomorrow, my wife has an appointment at 8:30 tomorrow a half hour drive away, I will likely stop reading at 10:30 and set an alarm for 6:30.
I like your typo.
I’m with ya! I almost slept until 7 a few weeks ago. The day went by so fast, I felt like I was behind all day.
I don’t really feel awake until noon or so. My preferred bedtime was 1am for a long time, but since I moved to 12:00 midnight I feel less tired during the day.
My preferred bedtime is sometime between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Dating back to college, I’ve found that I get a second wind, both physically and creatively, around 9 p.m. or 10 p.m.; left to my own devices, I’d stay up until around 2, and then sleep until 9 a.m. or so.
That doesn’t fit well with an office job, especially not at my current job, where I need to be in the office (after an hour’s commute) no later than 8 a.m. So, I grudgingly turn in around 10 p.m. on “school nights” now, and wake up at 5:40 a.m.; I leave the house around 6:30 a.m. But, if I’m on vacation, or it’s simply the weekend, I tend to revert to my night-owl schedule.
I like to hit the sack in the general vicinity of 3 a.m. It wasn’t too many years ago that I was more likely to aim for 3:30 a.m. or even a smidge later, but I guess I’m getting pretty conventional as I age.