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Day’s Verse:
Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field,
Until there is no more room,
So that you have to live alone in the midst of the land!
Isaiah 5:8
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Sleep: Enigmatic, yet essential. How easily we accept the mystery of sleep, assuming the naturalness of periodically passing into a near-coma, yet awakening whole and normal on the other side. Too, how easy it is to shrug off the importance of the seven to nine hours of sleep adults regularly require. Sleep comes last, squeezed in among the important bits of a busy schedule — a schedule propped on caffiene and strength of will. But caffiene only blocks the sleepiness-inducing hormone adenosine; it doesn’t replace missed sleep. Nothing, not even a dozen Cokes, can substitute for a solid night’s sleep.
I say all this, of course, because sleep has been much on my mind of late. Starting this job means I routinely wake up (ready or not) at 6:00, yet I find going to bed at a time commensurate to that early morning nearly impossible. Each night I set a goal of in bed by 9:00, and each night 10:00 rolls around, then 10:30, then later… And the morning arrives all too quickly. I do not call on caffiene’s handy stimulating properties, but increasily I understand those who do. Long, taskless days in a 5’x5’ cubicle, kept company only by this machine with its bulky CRT monitor (honestly!) don’t exactly provide enough stimulation to keep the brain buzzing, too.
So here’s my question for the day: What time do you usually go to bed, if you have a regular schedule, and what time do you get up? Are you happy with your sleep schedule? Do you need coffee/caffiene to kick start your mornings?
I generally go to bed between midnight and 2ish. Usually more toward the midnight/1 side. I get up at 8:15, and that always feels too early. I think even if I went to bed at 10, 8:15 would feel early. I’m a night owl and a morning sleeper, so this whole work thing has got my eyelids in a knot!
I’m definitely not happy with my sleep schedule, and I’ve tried to drink iced coffee but honestly, caffeine does nothing but make me dizzy. I never feel more energetic or perky, I just feel a general sense of dizziness and irritability. So I think that’s probably a good thing. I’ll never actually be addicted to coffee and feel the need to have it in order to function like a normal human being.
…though I doubt there’s anything that could make a Lesley normal, hehe.
During periods of school or work I usually go to bed between 1-2am. If I don’t have school or work I find that I usually end up in bed around 4am. I don’t have a regular morning schedule for my mornings but might soon. However, I do have a regular routine for taking a shower. I drink lots of coke and usually rely on that and an afternoon nap rather than good continuous sleep.
i try to be in bed by midnight… i’m up by 7am and always need coffee. i need more sleep or i need to be more interested in the scientific papers that i read that put me to sleep. either way, i wish i didn’t need coffee.
Sart goiong to bed at 9:00 and people will think you are acting like an old person.
I qm typing this from an internet cafe in Dijon, France, where I have discovered how different a French keyboard is. They have moved the period, the “a” and the “m”, mqking typing a chore. I tried mqking a snide remqrk in Germqny as well, but my time rqn out just qs I hit “Publish”. Anyway, I hope you qre doing zell. Tonoroz, on to Britqin!
I’m usually in bed by 10:30 and up (involuntarily, at the whim of a 3-year-old) by 6:30 or 7. I do rely on caffeine — even though it sounds like I’m getting 8 hours of sleep, I’m usually not. I don’t get quite enough down-time for my brain during the day, and the result is that I need about an hour for my thoughts to bounce around and decompress. Oh, and once a month (for about a week) I have hormonally-induced insomnia.
I usually go to bed around 1am, and get up about 7:30. In the summer I get up earlier and I like it, because I love cool quiet mornings.
The only time I don’t like my sleep schedule is when I can’t sleep so I end up getting up again and then not going back to bed till 3 or 4. And then I still wake up befire 8 usually, so it ends up being a pretty short night.