Waking Up is Hard To Do

I always laugh when I hear the recommendation to get eight hours of sleep a night. Eight hours?? How can one possibly function on so little rest?? I am a 10-12 hour kind of girl. Nothing quite recharges the depleted batteries like sleeping half of the day away. This isn’t something that came to me in my teenage years or in my 20s — my parents tell stories of when I was a baby and they had to instruct the babysitter to wake me up by 10 a.m. so I wouldn’t be awake all night. 

So apparently, nothing has changed since I was an infant.

In addition to my fondness for sleeping (and for sleeping in), I am a night owl. My second wind kicks in at 10 p.m. or later. For whatever reason, that is the time when my energy and motivation renews — if I had my way I would never get to bed before 1 a.m. OK, 1:30 a.m.

Of course, living in the real world, this kind of sleep cycle isn’t exactly an option, so I am forced to manage a schedule that is clearly against my personal biological nature. I’m not quite sure how my employers would react if I informed them I would be starting my days no earlier than 11 a.m. (one can dream, anyway!).

In spite of all of this, lately I have been thinking about how I can re-set my internal clock so I can get out of bed at reasonable times. Honestly, this has little to nothing to do with reducing the panic I feel when I realize I am running late AGAIN each morning during the workweek (my colleagues are all too familiar with my ponytail and makeup-free look). Instead, I think longingly of what it would be like to have even more time on the weekends to enjoy life.

As much as I love the lie-in on the weekends, I’m always shocked when suddenly it is 5 p.m. Where did the day go? Why didn’t I accomplish anything??? If you read my earlier posts, you will know my obsession with making to-do lists and crossing off items as I accomplished them – clearly, I rarely am able to cross items off of my personal to-do list on the weekends. Even if the item is “catch up on trashy gossip magazines”, too frequently I find myself on Sunday night, staring at the stack that I was unable to get to yet again. 

I’m not really sure how to get started on this inner clock re-set – Google searches reveal everything from staying up all night then going to bed at whatever time you want to fall asleep regularly, to fasting, to using blue light therapy. I think I’m going to try the good old-fashioned “drag my lazy ass out of bed” approach for now. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

Watch out world – here I come. Before noon!!!