Insomnia isn't the right term. I think the right word is 'weird.'
I’m starting to wonder about whether my sleep schedules will ever conform to those of normal people. Most people seem to get tired around 10:00 at night and drift off to sleep within an hour or two thereafter.
I have never been like that. My parents can attest that when I was a baby, I slept through mornings and afternoons, but stayed awake for hours and hours after midnight. I’m still like that now.
No matter how much I force myself to conform to the standard sleep schedule of most people (I’ll go whole semesters where I’m sleeping by midnight and up by 7:00 am), when I am not forced into that pattern, I revert to my standard system which involves me getting sleepy closer to 5:00 am. When I force myself to conform to everyone else's sleep patterns, I never really feel 'right.' When I was at KU, I spent an entire semester going to sleep by 10:00 each night and waking for an 8:00 class every single day (well, actually two classes since one met every MWF, and the other every TR). Every single day, I had to drag myself out of bed after having had a full 9 hours of sleep, and spent most of the morning listless and distracted in classes. The closer I got to late afternoon/evening, the more lively and animated I became. Even close friends today can attest to the fact that I'll not appear tired in the late evening. There have been times when I've been talking to a friend when he comes over to my apartment where he'll have to excuse himself so he can drive home to sleep at 1:00 am, but I'm still alert and feeling perfectly fine.
I'm fairly convinced that my circadian rhythm is offset from the standard one, and I don't really know why.
Just look at the majority of my recent blog postings’ time-stamps: 2:27 AM, 10:26 PM, 3:01 AM, 3:57 AM, 10:26 PM, 10:25 PM, 10:23 PM, 1:08 AM, 5:11 PM, 12:57 PM, 1:02 AM, 2:11 AM, 12:19 AM, 12:00 AM, 11:27 PM, 1:24 AM.
With only two exceptions (5:11 PM and 12:57 PM), my previous 16 posts were all brought online around or after 10:30 at night. That’s right… I do my productive work during a period of the day when (if I had a normal sleep cycle) I should be asleep.
There needs to be a line of work for professionals that can accommodate people whose circadian rhythms are significantly out of synchronization with everyone else’s.
I have never been like that. My parents can attest that when I was a baby, I slept through mornings and afternoons, but stayed awake for hours and hours after midnight. I’m still like that now.
No matter how much I force myself to conform to the standard sleep schedule of most people (I’ll go whole semesters where I’m sleeping by midnight and up by 7:00 am), when I am not forced into that pattern, I revert to my standard system which involves me getting sleepy closer to 5:00 am. When I force myself to conform to everyone else's sleep patterns, I never really feel 'right.' When I was at KU, I spent an entire semester going to sleep by 10:00 each night and waking for an 8:00 class every single day (well, actually two classes since one met every MWF, and the other every TR). Every single day, I had to drag myself out of bed after having had a full 9 hours of sleep, and spent most of the morning listless and distracted in classes. The closer I got to late afternoon/evening, the more lively and animated I became. Even close friends today can attest to the fact that I'll not appear tired in the late evening. There have been times when I've been talking to a friend when he comes over to my apartment where he'll have to excuse himself so he can drive home to sleep at 1:00 am, but I'm still alert and feeling perfectly fine.
I'm fairly convinced that my circadian rhythm is offset from the standard one, and I don't really know why.
Just look at the majority of my recent blog postings’ time-stamps: 2:27 AM, 10:26 PM, 3:01 AM, 3:57 AM, 10:26 PM, 10:25 PM, 10:23 PM, 1:08 AM, 5:11 PM, 12:57 PM, 1:02 AM, 2:11 AM, 12:19 AM, 12:00 AM, 11:27 PM, 1:24 AM.
With only two exceptions (5:11 PM and 12:57 PM), my previous 16 posts were all brought online around or after 10:30 at night. That’s right… I do my productive work during a period of the day when (if I had a normal sleep cycle) I should be asleep.
There needs to be a line of work for professionals that can accommodate people whose circadian rhythms are significantly out of synchronization with everyone else’s.
posted by The Academian | 2:14 AM
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