Sleepy Time
My clock is back on schedule after a few weeks of being way out of kilter. If you check the post times from the last week or so you'll see what I mean. Seriously, I work during the day, so what the hell am I doing up at 4 a.m. posting to my blog?
Jeremy Zawodney has a great theory about why his cycle goes kapooey:
It seems that my body runs on a 25-26 hour clock, usually tending closer to 26 hours. This really drives me nuts sometimes. Scheduling is a real pain in the ass at times. Like when I'm not even close to falling asleep until 3am but I know I have to be somewhere at 10am. Because I've also noticed that I need a minimum of 6.5 hours of sleep each night. Otherwise the next day really sucks. I'm just dragging all day long.
Grr.
Maybe if I lived REALLY FAR NORTH (think Arctic Circle), I'd be better equipped to deal with the odd light/dark times.
Or not.
I totally know what Jeremy's talking about. I can get my sleep cycle out of wack so easily and it'll last for a LONG time... I've always been sort of a night owl. It's quiet and I can get stuff done a lot easier during the evening - this is especially true now that I have a wife and baby. 12 a.m. to 5 a.m seems like a perfect time to me to get some serious hacking done (and some would say this is the ONLY time to do serious hacking, but I digress... ;-) ).
This week I had to reign in my sleep schedule so I could both get to work on time and not lose the morning or afternoon to that sleep-deprived "blank" that comes over you when you've only gotten four hours sleep. My secret is Melatonin. I pop a pill 15 minutes before I want to sleep and POOF I'm out like a light and wake up refreshed. In the U.S. you can buy melatonin in grocery stores and health food places. In Spain it's illegal like Heroin... so I had to have my Mom "smuggle" in a new supply for me when she came for a visit in August. I went more than a six months without it and it wasn't pretty. Sometimes I would get COMPLETELY reversed and want to sleep all day and be wide awake all night.
The thing is - even though I'm a night-owl - I would LOVE to be a morning person. A few weeks after the complete-reversal thing happens, my bio-clock suddenly flips and I HAVE to go to bed early and then I wake up at like 5 a.m. or something. This is AWESOME. I'm so amazingly productive in the morning... I'd love to wake up every day at that time. But this means putting off things I want to do at night, and I hate that. Also at night I always can push off the time I go to bed. If I get really into some technology, I can always cut an extra hour of sleep and do some more tinkering or learning. But in the morning, I have my day waiting for me. My family wakes up, I have to get ready for work, etc. The time is much more finite - even though I'm more productive in the time I have.
Anyways, I'll never be a morning person, so I won't go on about it much more, but it would be cool.
By the way, I really dig some supplements. Right now I regularly take Gingko biloba and St. John's Wart (nature's prozac). They really do have an effect on me. Especially now with winter approaching - I don't want to get into a funk. I had a funk last year that lasted from November through February. Ana was not amused. The solution to this is 1) Exercise and 2) Sunlight (keep my body clock on the right schedule so I can see the day.
-Russ