Only the other day, my dear sister, moved doubtless by my peppering her inbox with maudlin wails about missing her over the holidays, bought me an Amtrak ticket to visit her in the distant land of Seattle. So here I am, tucked up under a homemade quilt in the golf-bedecked spare room of the house where said sister and her husband abide.
After the weariness of my travels drove me to an ‘early’ bed yesterday (read ‘decent hour’), I had hoped that perhaps this break in my routine might allow me to realign my body’s schedule with that of the workaday world. But no such miracle, I fear, shall transpire. Sister sledge, as she and her more sarcastic half left me and Puck in an oversized armchair and trickled off to sleep, leaned over with a kiss and a kind word: “Stay up as late as you want, and tell me if you need anything.”
“Don’t worry,” said I, “I shan’t be banging about here much longer.” And yet, here I am, some hours later, having slowly transitioned from armchair to quilt-piled futon, still awake and watching a DVD on my laptop.
I think I have somehow become addicted to this time, to the slice of the world that is mine alone. I try to walk and work in a perpetual hush as everyone sleeps, as the darkness dozes outside and the blue of dawn gathers itself in the unseen East. Somehow, no matter how I determine I will scoot quickly on to bed, I linger in the twilight for just one thing more, one task or amusement, one tidying or letter, one essay or one chapter. I hate to let the day die, when I am the only one awake in my world to sustain it.
Comments
Nighttime is the right time
You’ll have to be careful about that. I’m the same way: left to my own devices, I tend to shift to an almost nocturnal cycle, sleeping during the day and waking at night. You don’t even realize it’s happening. You just go to bed later and later and before you know it, you can’t remember the last time you slept when the sun wasn’t up.
It doesn’t make for restful sleep, either. Unless you’ve got nice big heavy curtains and earplugs, sleeping during the day just isn’t the same as sleeping at night.
These days I try to force myself into bed before midnight, but even so I still end up reading until two or three in the morning more often than not. I know what you mean, though. I love that time late at night when it feels like I’m the only person in the world still awake. Somehow, without it, the day just doesn’t seem finished.
Getting to bed early makes for great days
At 2:08AM, I’ll contradict myself by saying that I’ve been forcing myself to bed by 10PM—12 at the latest. My productivity at work had been suffering due to staying up way too late.
I’ve noticed that every time I get to bed by 10PM, I have a great day the next day. I can wake up without the stress of an alarm clock, have a leisurely breakfast, and then spend the entire day with a clear mind—and all the benefits that come with it.
Re: Getting to bed early makes for great days
Hmm…I’ve never noticed that (though I have a dearth of recent experimental data for ‘in bed before 10 pm’ in any case!) but what I’ve always noticed is that sleeping in too late is the pits. It can give me migraines, and even if it doesn’t, I feel sluggish and bleary, sort of like I’m coming down with something, all day.
It is also worth noting that while alarm clocks give me a pain, I am not very good at waking up without them :)