I’m a night owl.
Huh? You don’t believe me? Well if you need proof just look at when this was posted. It is now 2am in my little part of the world as I write this. I earnestly do not feel tired (okay, you caught me. Maybe I’m a little tired). This is how I operate consistently. I love staying up late.
People constantly tell me I should get more sleep. Those are the ones that are up at the crack of bloody dawn. Some of them are probably up before I even get in bed. And even the ones that aren’t that insane are up by 8am. In fact, everything and everyone seem to run on an 8am-10pm schedule.
Everything closes at 10pm. Everyone goes to sleep and the ones that stay up are “too tired.” It sucks for me because that’s when I’m really at the peak of my day. That’s my lunch time you could say. Somehow, the socially acceptable “awake hours” don’t line up well with my body clock. It’s like some sick joke.
So, I’m here to ask you how you do it. How, you… you Morning Birds can get up with the sun. How you can bounce out of bed in an instant while I’m hitting the snooze for 2 hours. Even worse is that you little birdies are doing homework at 9am while I’m still in bed. The last thing I want to do in the morning is work. Maybe it’s the coffee. You know, that bitter icky liquid you can somehow trick your body into enjoying. It’s turned you into little hyper humming birds.
“But wait Mister Night Owl,” I can hear you asking, “if you have trouble getting up shouldn’t coffee be the first thing you reach for?”
Simple answer, no. Caffeine makes me jittery. It makes me do that annoying bouncing leg thing that shakes the whole table. The fundamental problem isn’t that I can’t stay awake (how could I stay up late then? Hmm?), it’s that I don’t like waking up.
You see, there’s so much crap in my life from day to day that it becomes this nagging thing in my brain. I wake up and I have all this stuff to do. Some days I enjoy it, others it’s like this never ending list of things I hate. At night, when I’m up late, all of the day’s crap is behind me and all my future crap is tomorrow and tomorrow is still hours and a night’s sleep away. It is a pressure free time and I don’t rush to bed to get it over with, I stay up to enjoy it. That’s why I’m a Night Owl.
So, I ask, how do you Morning Birds do it? Because, as far as I’m concerned, you Birds can keep your early worms and I’ll just stay happily up in my tree, hooting away.
Night Owl, I totally understand your pain. I, too, was like you and slept until noon or later; then came alive at night. However, when I joined the "working" world, I had no choice but to force myself to get up every morning at the "crack of bloody dawn". It was painful but a necessity!
ReplyDeleteNow, after years of this schedule, I have difficulty sleeping until noon. Maybe once I quit the "working" world, I will revert back. Until then, I get up, drink the coffee (which I have always loved the way it smelled and tasted-coffee ice cream has always been my fave!), and start the day! My survival is now to get into the office early enough that I can ease into my day by reading email with a cup of coffee before heading to my first meeting.
It's doable!