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Oct. 7th, 2006 04:30 pmMy body has finally taken its revenge upon my mind for the three-week stint of insufficient sleep.
My natural sleep pattern is to sleep from about 3:00 in the morning until 11:00 or noon. Working a job that requires two weeks of 8:00-5:00 and two weeks of 7:00-3:30 on a rotating basis obviously disrupts my circadian rhythm. I had thes ame trouble in high school, which was also 7:00-3:30, but since I was able to indulge myself with my college class schedules and then request evening shifts at my subsequent jobs, I've spent several years following my biological clock. I'm not used to it anymore.
I had been trying to be a normal person for the first three months of this job. This required going to bed at the absolutely ungodly hour of 10:00 in order to wake up at 6 or 7. This is very, very difficult for me, not just because most of my internet friends are in other time zones so that they're just getting off work and finishing dinner and going online, but also because 10:00 is one of my peak periods of mental acuity, thanks to the rhythm at which my body works.
Then three weeks ago I got distracted and stayed up very very late, and thus started The Experimental Period. It started out as just not remembering to go to bed until 4, so I only got two hours of sleep; then I got home from work and took a nap for two hours, then got back up to experience life again. This worked surprisingly well! For the first week things were sort of erratic, because I was still trying, honestly trying, to get back to that 10-6 sleep thing, and just forgetting to go to bed. I was very very tired that week because I wasn't rolling with it.
But after that I kept at it, because I was starting to adjust. It made sense to me. For the past three weeks I have been awake for ten hours, asleep for two, awake for ten, asleep for two, and it's been working just fine! I haven't been tired at inappropriate times, there has been no effect upon my mental acuity, and I haven't noticed any down-side at all.
UNTIL UNTIL UNTIL. While working on a very exciting bit of writing on Thursday, I missed my naptime. And had to pull an all-nighter and go to work without any sleep at all. So instead of ten hours awake on two hours of sleep, I had TWENTY-TWO hours awake on two hours of sleep. And thus I died.
I felt like I really was going to die at work - by mid-afternoon I had the shakes and couldn't seem to keep my eyes focussed on my CRT - but I made it home for my two-hour nap and tried to carry on as usual. I was, of course, still tired after the nap, but it manifested itself as that crazy manic sort of tired that is almost as good as being drunk.
I went to bed at my usual time - 3:00 - and woke at a normal-natural-sleep-schedule time - noon - but was unable to reach full consciousness. I could sort of swim up to the surface of sleep, enough to look at the clock every half hour or so - hell, at 12:30 I managed to stand up and walk to the bathroom, but somehow ended up back in bed again - but I couldn't stay awake. It's now a quarter past four and I've only just managed to wrestle myself into a state in which I was capable of putting on clothing and leaving the bedroom. And I know if I lie down on the couch I'm probably going to pass out.
This really isn't cool. I love lying down and relaxing, and I love being comfy in bed, but actually being asleep is really, really boring.
Edit: Upon rereading, I realize that my "power sleep" just now was only 13 hours. I have slept for 13 hours before and not thought anything of it!!! But of course that was when I was usually getting 8 hours, so 13 was only about a 50% increase; 13 hours when you've been getting 2 is nearly sevenfold, making it seem like a much longer period than it really is.
My natural sleep pattern is to sleep from about 3:00 in the morning until 11:00 or noon. Working a job that requires two weeks of 8:00-5:00 and two weeks of 7:00-3:30 on a rotating basis obviously disrupts my circadian rhythm. I had thes ame trouble in high school, which was also 7:00-3:30, but since I was able to indulge myself with my college class schedules and then request evening shifts at my subsequent jobs, I've spent several years following my biological clock. I'm not used to it anymore.
I had been trying to be a normal person for the first three months of this job. This required going to bed at the absolutely ungodly hour of 10:00 in order to wake up at 6 or 7. This is very, very difficult for me, not just because most of my internet friends are in other time zones so that they're just getting off work and finishing dinner and going online, but also because 10:00 is one of my peak periods of mental acuity, thanks to the rhythm at which my body works.
Then three weeks ago I got distracted and stayed up very very late, and thus started The Experimental Period. It started out as just not remembering to go to bed until 4, so I only got two hours of sleep; then I got home from work and took a nap for two hours, then got back up to experience life again. This worked surprisingly well! For the first week things were sort of erratic, because I was still trying, honestly trying, to get back to that 10-6 sleep thing, and just forgetting to go to bed. I was very very tired that week because I wasn't rolling with it.
But after that I kept at it, because I was starting to adjust. It made sense to me. For the past three weeks I have been awake for ten hours, asleep for two, awake for ten, asleep for two, and it's been working just fine! I haven't been tired at inappropriate times, there has been no effect upon my mental acuity, and I haven't noticed any down-side at all.
UNTIL UNTIL UNTIL. While working on a very exciting bit of writing on Thursday, I missed my naptime. And had to pull an all-nighter and go to work without any sleep at all. So instead of ten hours awake on two hours of sleep, I had TWENTY-TWO hours awake on two hours of sleep. And thus I died.
I felt like I really was going to die at work - by mid-afternoon I had the shakes and couldn't seem to keep my eyes focussed on my CRT - but I made it home for my two-hour nap and tried to carry on as usual. I was, of course, still tired after the nap, but it manifested itself as that crazy manic sort of tired that is almost as good as being drunk.
I went to bed at my usual time - 3:00 - and woke at a normal-natural-sleep-schedule time - noon - but was unable to reach full consciousness. I could sort of swim up to the surface of sleep, enough to look at the clock every half hour or so - hell, at 12:30 I managed to stand up and walk to the bathroom, but somehow ended up back in bed again - but I couldn't stay awake. It's now a quarter past four and I've only just managed to wrestle myself into a state in which I was capable of putting on clothing and leaving the bedroom. And I know if I lie down on the couch I'm probably going to pass out.
This really isn't cool. I love lying down and relaxing, and I love being comfy in bed, but actually being asleep is really, really boring.
Edit: Upon rereading, I realize that my "power sleep" just now was only 13 hours. I have slept for 13 hours before and not thought anything of it!!! But of course that was when I was usually getting 8 hours, so 13 was only about a 50% increase; 13 hours when you've been getting 2 is nearly sevenfold, making it seem like a much longer period than it really is.
