all talk of circadian rhythm
Are you a night owl? An early bird? When do you go to sleep? When do you wake up in the morning? Tell me. Tell me everything.
I like to stay up after everyone else has gone to bed. And I love to sleep, and I hate getting out of bed. I am most myself at night. I am least myself in the morning. If you ever catch me crying, it's because it's before 10 A.M.
A perfect night's sleep for me is from midnight to eight. And I'm not ready to engage humanity (on any level) until ten.
But I'm trying to figure out how to change this. Is it possible, through determination and practice, to unmake a circadian rhythm?
(Kids are not the only reason. They're one reason. But I blame them for everything. There's another reason.)
It's my job - I've gone from part-time (flexible hours here and there) to full-time (what a way to make a livin') and suddenly the calendar is mostly full of those forty hours that bedevil most of us and if I'm just another Dolly Parton pertly astride the cosmic wheel then when does anything else get done?
Late at night may be great for idle indulgences experienced even exhausted (headphones music, woodstove embers, the moon) but it's a terrible time to get anything done. I'm bleary, yearning for escape, not in the mood to do taxes.
Saturdays and Sundays are given over fully to the children, and not by choice. I wish my weekends were MOSTLY given over to the children; instead, they win from us the entire two days.
(We are not helicopter parents. We keep trying to inspire them to independence. We keep kicking them out of the house into the outdoors, we keep trying to re-create the supervision-free environment we remember growing up, when we were left to our own devices of imagination and troublemaking and adventure. We keep trying to raise "free-range kids." We keep trying to offer them freedom and opportunity to discover life on their own terms ... and yet they cling to us still, and refuse to see a world beyond the one their parents painstakingly arrange for them well in advance. It's frustrating, stultifying. We cannot orchestrate awe-inspiring fun-times every waking moment, we actively resist that, yet it's all they clamor for. That's not what I came in here to say, but anyway that's the ENTIRE FUCKIGN WEEKEKNEDND, as well as every snow day and sick day and vacation day and national holiday and early release day and every day between the summer solstice and Labor Day, either forcing our children into independent activities they actively resist with fury and violence and recrimination and tearful complaint, or giving in to their demands and packing the schedule full of "fun" "activities" "for the whole family.")
(Maybe the problem is that the children have no role models for happy, independent human beings occupied by their own interests. They never see their parents reading a book on a comfy couch on a rainy morning, so how can they know how to try out that behavior for themselves? The parents always have some damn thing they need to get done, so maybe the kids think they need to be perpetually busy too.)
Brilliant insight, Chief. Now what was I complaining about? OH RIGHT SUNRISE
So if I'm at my worst in the early morning, and a starry-eyed tired person late at night, and have no weekend freedom, and a full-time job, and I seem to need eight hours of sleep, and my after-work hours are occupied with dinner prep / dinner cooking / dinner eating / dinner cleanup / bathtime / bedtime / arguing about the necessity of bedtime with small people all the way up until 9:30 P.M. every night ...
Then when do I go food shopping? When do I get the car inspected? When do I pick up the dead cat's ashes from the vet? When do I pluck weeds from the garden? When do I call my parents? When do I go for a run? A walk? A stroll? A drive to the pharmacy for Genevieve's antibiotics? When do I have the fucking audacity to read a motherfucking book?
The only tentative solution I have at this moment is that I need to wake up earlier and go to bed earlier. Take some time in the morning to work through it all. The night is useless, it's too low on energy, I'm down to my last nerve and trying to chill out. BUT: what if, instead of sleeping through the first two or three hours of daylight, I put the coffee in the coffeemaker the night before and get up at dawn and just stop whining and drink the coffee I made the night before and sit up and face the brightening sky and fucking CONFRONT.
Most of me suspects that's trying to go too strictly against nature. It's fighting instinct. I'm writing this at seven minutes until midnight because that's when I write this shit out. Trying to do otherwise means fighting. I'm tired of fighting.
Unless, someway somehow, it's possible for the night owl to morph into the early bird and reap avian benefits. Moonlit meals of bush rats and Panamanian Night Monkeys relinquished for dawn's lagomorphs and largemouth bass.
If you can, please advise.
I like to stay up after everyone else has gone to bed. And I love to sleep, and I hate getting out of bed. I am most myself at night. I am least myself in the morning. If you ever catch me crying, it's because it's before 10 A.M.
A perfect night's sleep for me is from midnight to eight. And I'm not ready to engage humanity (on any level) until ten.
But I'm trying to figure out how to change this. Is it possible, through determination and practice, to unmake a circadian rhythm?
(Kids are not the only reason. They're one reason. But I blame them for everything. There's another reason.)
It's my job - I've gone from part-time (flexible hours here and there) to full-time (what a way to make a livin') and suddenly the calendar is mostly full of those forty hours that bedevil most of us and if I'm just another Dolly Parton pertly astride the cosmic wheel then when does anything else get done?
Late at night may be great for idle indulgences experienced even exhausted (headphones music, woodstove embers, the moon) but it's a terrible time to get anything done. I'm bleary, yearning for escape, not in the mood to do taxes.
Saturdays and Sundays are given over fully to the children, and not by choice. I wish my weekends were MOSTLY given over to the children; instead, they win from us the entire two days.
(We are not helicopter parents. We keep trying to inspire them to independence. We keep kicking them out of the house into the outdoors, we keep trying to re-create the supervision-free environment we remember growing up, when we were left to our own devices of imagination and troublemaking and adventure. We keep trying to raise "free-range kids." We keep trying to offer them freedom and opportunity to discover life on their own terms ... and yet they cling to us still, and refuse to see a world beyond the one their parents painstakingly arrange for them well in advance. It's frustrating, stultifying. We cannot orchestrate awe-inspiring fun-times every waking moment, we actively resist that, yet it's all they clamor for. That's not what I came in here to say, but anyway that's the ENTIRE FUCKIGN WEEKEKNEDND, as well as every snow day and sick day and vacation day and national holiday and early release day and every day between the summer solstice and Labor Day, either forcing our children into independent activities they actively resist with fury and violence and recrimination and tearful complaint, or giving in to their demands and packing the schedule full of "fun" "activities" "for the whole family.")
(Maybe the problem is that the children have no role models for happy, independent human beings occupied by their own interests. They never see their parents reading a book on a comfy couch on a rainy morning, so how can they know how to try out that behavior for themselves? The parents always have some damn thing they need to get done, so maybe the kids think they need to be perpetually busy too.)
Brilliant insight, Chief. Now what was I complaining about? OH RIGHT SUNRISE
So if I'm at my worst in the early morning, and a starry-eyed tired person late at night, and have no weekend freedom, and a full-time job, and I seem to need eight hours of sleep, and my after-work hours are occupied with dinner prep / dinner cooking / dinner eating / dinner cleanup / bathtime / bedtime / arguing about the necessity of bedtime with small people all the way up until 9:30 P.M. every night ...
Then when do I go food shopping? When do I get the car inspected? When do I pick up the dead cat's ashes from the vet? When do I pluck weeds from the garden? When do I call my parents? When do I go for a run? A walk? A stroll? A drive to the pharmacy for Genevieve's antibiotics? When do I have the fucking audacity to read a motherfucking book?
The only tentative solution I have at this moment is that I need to wake up earlier and go to bed earlier. Take some time in the morning to work through it all. The night is useless, it's too low on energy, I'm down to my last nerve and trying to chill out. BUT: what if, instead of sleeping through the first two or three hours of daylight, I put the coffee in the coffeemaker the night before and get up at dawn and just stop whining and drink the coffee I made the night before and sit up and face the brightening sky and fucking CONFRONT.
Most of me suspects that's trying to go too strictly against nature. It's fighting instinct. I'm writing this at seven minutes until midnight because that's when I write this shit out. Trying to do otherwise means fighting. I'm tired of fighting.
Unless, someway somehow, it's possible for the night owl to morph into the early bird and reap avian benefits. Moonlit meals of bush rats and Panamanian Night Monkeys relinquished for dawn's lagomorphs and largemouth bass.
If you can, please advise.