There may be an infinite amount of time, but there’s a finite amount of patience. I’m pretty good about diving into graphics work for hours at a time, 12+(in one sitting) at my longest. The less time I have however, the harder it is to actually sit down and work on just one thing. I don’t think I’ve gone to bed once this week without getting up shortly after to work, either because I’ve gotten another idea, or because I just can’t sleep.

At least I’m making good, if not punctual, progress.

Lark

Don’t think I haven’t noticed there haven’t been any sleep updates lately. I know you all are dying to hear all about it. Well, here’s the thing…

Notice how I was posting 1-3 times a day for a while, and now I’m lucky if I get 1 thrown up every few days? I’ve been busy with work. Really busy. I’ve been staying up working until I couldn’t stay awake anymore. My bedtime has been pushed back, from 10pm to 12am to 2am to 4am to 6am, etc, DAILY. I’m still awake right now from the night before, at 10am. I probably won’t be going to bed until this evening, in a weak attempt to get on a somewhat normal schedule.

I evaluated my reasons for wanting to get up at regular times, and right now it’s much more important that I finish my work than it is to be consistent. It’s odd, but I still only sleep 7-8 hours at a time, I’m well rested, refreshed, ready for more work when I get up. I actually think this is how my body is wired–my sleep schedule usually creeps forward like this when I don’t have to get up at a certain time each day. I’m fine, it’s the world that’s messed up.

Back to work…

Lark

Because here comes another sleep update. Even though I was with family at the hospital till 1am, got to bed around 2am, and didn’t get to sleep until 3am, I still woke at 8:10am and jumped straight into the shower. I notice that sometimes I’m up in 5 minutes, sometimes 15. 20-minutes is a good time. And there’s been no more groaning, no more struggling to get out of bed. The repeated alarms sufficiently wake me up. It’s a good thing I’m not sharing a bed with anyone right now, 20 alarms in a row would be annoying for someone without my condition. Although I have considered strapping my phone to my ankle at night and setting it to vibrate, when I’m visiting family or something. That could do it.

Lark

Cause I know you’re all dying to hear it! Oddly enough, I had some sort of alarm malfunction. If you weren’t with us earlier, when I described my mostly untested method for getting up on time, it’s very simple:

Decide what time you want to get up. Set your alarm for 20 minutes earlier. Then set your alarm for every 2-minute increment until you get to the time you actually want to get up. I’m at 8:00am, 8:02, 8:04, all the way till 8:20. Baby steps. I call it the ‘brute force’ method. I liken it to having someone work on your house, the noise constantly waking you up until it happens so many times you can’t get back to sleep. As I’ve said before, this wouldn’t be necessary except I work from home and can make my own hours. Like you might imagine, that’s really messed up my sleep schedule, I’m trying to whip it back into shape.

Anyway, this morning my alarm stopped 3-4 alarms in (of 11 total alarms). I thought maybe I slept through them, but now I’m certain they didn’t go off. I wonder if it’s due to a glitch in my phone, or what. I’m going to try to look for a different alarm program later. Anyway, at 8:35am I roused, looked at my watch, and hopped in the shower. Crisis averted! YAY!!!

Lark

aka Strategies for early waking. So how about one more post about my sleep schedule? Keeping in mind my two earlier posts (here and here), I actually made myself get up at a set time this morning. I got to sleep about 4:15 am and woke up at 8:30.

I’ll explain my method and touch on another method I’ve read about in a bit, but first let me go into my background.

Finally got around to scanning articles related to the one I talked about in my earlier post. This was the next in line.

“‘Night Owls’ Report More Insomnia-related Symptoms” Basically there is a severe rise in insomnia-related symptoms in night owls.

Another for the “no duh” department, but it’s nice to have a personal assumption proven.

Compared to the morning and intermediate types, people with insomnia who prefer evening activities (i.e., “night owls”) reported the most sleep/wake irregularities and waking distress, even after adjusting for severity of sleep disturbance.

I’ve just read this article. Apparently morning people and might owls have completely different brain function.

Using magnetic resonance imaging-guided brain stimulation, scientists tested muscle torque and the excitability of pathways through the spinal cord and brain. They found that morning people’s brains were most excitable at 9 a.m. This slowly decreased through the day. It was the polar opposite for evening people, whose brains were most excitable at 9 p.m.

This kind of goes under the “Duh!” category, as I know my brain is more active at night. I was starting to assume that it was due to conditioning myself to stay up late, and now it looks like I might have been born that way.

More interesting stuff–morning people’s physical strength is the same all day, night owl’s strength increases throughout the day.