There was a time when I was growing up that I would always need to wake up with the sun on weekends as I felt like sleeping was for night time and it was too bright during the day to sleep. My younger brother used to sleep all day when he had the chance to and he would be forced by my mother to wake up no later than 10 o clock. At the time, I never understood how he could sleep with it being so bright and having so much going on around him. Well, fast forward about 15 years, (maybe more,) and I find myself adopting his childhood sleep tendencies. This started when I had my first job in the government in 2018. Each day that I worked, I had to get up early which meant I had to start going to bed earlier. If this wasn’t bad enough, I had made a promise to myself after school ended for me that I would never wake up as early as I did in my school days, (this was approximately 6:30 a.m.) as I never liked school or having to do anything educational. The fact remained though that I hated work even less and needed to be up as early as 5:30 in the morning to be to work for 8 o clock. After I quit my job, I reverted back to my brother’s old habits of staying up all hours of the night and watching tv/movies ETC as getting up early to me meant having to go to work. I realized thar people who don’t have to get up early generally don’t unless they’re classified as an early riser. At one point during this time period, I managed to stay up for four straight days with no sleep and would watch movies galore during this time period and any sort of tv I wanted. The problem was that on the fourth day, I was starting to notice that it was negatively effecting my health as I started to hallucinate certain things and in one particular instance, I did not recognize one of my staff that came into my room for my care as I had not slept for four days. This did not sit well with mom and she tried to get me on a sleep routine which for over three years, (this was how long ago I had stayed up for four days as it was in 2021,) I argued the point not wanting to be considered an “old person who woke up with the sun and went to bed with the moon.” During the course of this three year battle, I would protest anything that was booked for me during the day in favour of it occurring in the evening hours which was when I was fully awake. I would protest this even more if the engagement was occurring in the morning. Well, it took about 5 years for me to get back on a routine following my departure from my job, (this was coincidentally the same amount of time it took for me to get over the events that occurred in my first relationship where I was able to restart life as a normal person as I had considered myself crazy in the five years following my break up with her,) but I finally got back on somewhat of a routine where I try to be in bed no later than 12:00 midnight. This is something that was hard at first as I had to get used to it. Also, I never actually go to bed right at midnight which is what mom wants. I do this for the aforementioned reason that I feel like having a set bedtime means I’m an old man of sorts. However, recently I have been so busy with life during the day that some days I can just barely make it to midnight before going to bed. However, I do tend to sleep a lot during the day and when this happens, sometimes I can be up later as I’m wide awake in the evening hours. So to me, the question should be something to the effect of: Is it my preference to be a morning person or a night person? Despite me trying to adopt a full routine, I would have to emphatically state that I am a night person. I much prefer to be up at night and sleep all day almost like a teenager. I will say this though. A lot of people don’t agree with this.
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