Odd Hours

In the multiple years I have participated in NaBloPoMo, I have never used one of the daily prompts; however, the prompt for Nov. 14 this year struck me. I have always been one of the people at work who has been one of the first to arrive and one of the last to leave. People who arrive early always assume I am a morning person. People who stay late assume I am a night owl. The truth is I am both.

People have a hard time believing it, but I truly am a night owl and a morning person. As I have written before, I am just NOT a mid-day person at all. Give me my siesta time every day. No matter the day of the week, I wake up at the alarm-clock time whether the alarm is set or not.

Mornings are great. There is a quiet, calm nature about those first hours. Waking up early enough on a work day, or even the weekend, allows plenty of time to ease into the day without having the frantic start that, for me, makes the entire day seem frantic.

Likewise, the night is another quiet time. After the day, no matter how stressful, the night offers a time of peace. The knowledge of the day, while fresh and after having some reflection, can be well used in the night hours to efficiently accomplish much work.

In both the morning and late night I am wide awake and fully functional. My brain, and body, notably sag in the middle of the day. One of these days I will find the job that does not require me to work from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm. That I like both sounds odd to most people who are only morning or night driven. That I dread the afternoon hours sounds equally odd to my 9-5 friends. My preferred hours definitely do not coincide with the work culture of the United States; however, many other countries embrace a break in the middle of the day. I for one think we should give it a shot.

Sleeping Early

For years I have functioned on very little sleep compared to the amount most people I know get. Going sleepless started in college with long nights of study and then continued as I moved into teaching with late nights grading. As my interests have grown, the late nights and early

mornings provide the best time for me to do my non-work related activities.

Lately, though, I have been waking up far earlier than I conditioned myself to do over the years. Instead of waking up between four and five, for the last few weeks I have been waking up at three - wide awake, brain in drive. When I wake up that fully, I get up. Sleep will not return, so I might as well make use of the time and get up.

The brain often uses dreams to resolve problems that have been unsolved in the day. I have had experiences since high school when I have awakened at the end of a dream and recalled the dream as it answered some question from the day. My 3:00 AM wake-ups have followed the pattern. When I wake up, I have answers to questions I pondered over the last few days. As long as I am waking up with good answers I do not really mind having the extra hours added to my day.

What I do mind about the extra hours in the day is the exhaustion that hits me mid-afternoon. From the time I first learned of the siesta, I have always wanted to live somewhere that took a siesta daily. A good friend of mine does research into circadian rhythms, the natural cycles that govern our body’s waking and sleeping periods. I do not need research. Let me take a nap about 1:30 in the afternoon and I am fine until midnight.

Work schedules do not work that way. We do not have nap time at high school and I am not about to nap while the kids are up and about. Over the years I have learned to manage my way through the afternoon doldrums, but I do avoid as much detail work during the early afternoon hours as possible.

Eventually though, I am going to find my siesta-loving job.

Not Without Caffeine

Today I managed to function on only two and one-half hours of sleep, though it seemed like much less. The throbbing headache that kept me from sleeping did not dissipate until it was time for my alarm to sound. At that point, I just lay in bed waiting for it to go off so I could turn it off. I managed to sleep through the sunrise, but the dogs' activity ensured that I would not stay in bed much longer than that.

Today, though is not the day I am going to worry about. Tomorrow, a work day, is the day I dread. As I have aged, I find that insomnia's effects are generally delayed by a day, so in this case, it means I'm going to be exhausted on a work day, rather than on the weekend, as I would prefer.

Of course insomnia does not come on a schedule. It happens at the most inconvenient times.

Fortunately, caffeine comes in many convenient ways.

Three Hours in a Webinar

As budget cuts and increases in technology have become equally ubiquitous, webinars have been replacing meetings more and more often. Frequently, one is logged onto the computer for the visuals while on the phone calling into a conference call line for the audio of the meeting.

I have enough trouble sitting still and staying awake when there are real people presenting, much less sitting at a computer screen with a handset pressed to my ear.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being in three hours of webinars.

The only good thing about being in the webinars is that I could tweet on twitter with the sound off on my other computer.

One, highlighting updates to a software program we use was so engaging I actually set my phone to speaker and kicked back with my feet on my desk as I watched some remote specialist manipulate the screen. I recognized the voices of several friends who were also using the same program as they *2’d into the conference to ask a question.

That was the point I began to relax.

At some point later I had relaxed enough that my feet slid off the desk and the heels thunked loudly on the floor.

I’m so glad my friends were participating in the webinar so I could call them to ask about all those things I missed while relaxed.