Thursday, November 22, 2007

I am a creature of the night... or am I?

During my recent trip to Victoria, I had to wake up at the ungodly hours of 5.30 am, 6.30am and one day, 6.00am. Thus, I am somewhat not surprised that I woke up today at 7.30 am (even though technically, I went to bed after midnight). And I didn't even complain about the noise upstairs. It was a natural wake-up call.

I know for a fact that my brain requires between 5 and 7 solid hours of sleep or otherwise, I won't be functioning. However, it was funny to discover that I had grown used to an early rise. As a matter of fact, yesterday I was so tired by 11.30am that I started wondering what was wrong with me. Well, nothing is wrong, but if you think about the fact that I had been already up for 5 hours, I shouldn't be all that surprised.

Can people really switch sleeping patterns and habits that they have had for many, many years? I tried to do this switch in 2002, and then again in 2004. However, it really didn't work very well. There were times when I was sleeping 3 to 4 hours, because I was teaching first thing in the morning (6 am) then came home, had breakfast and went to work. Furthermore, I needed to prepare my lectures in the evening, so often I would go to bed at 2 am.

J and I were talking about our former capacities to work all day and night to finish projects, and how through time, we seem to have lost that amazing capacity to work. But the truth is, I think that as people grow older, their physiques are unable to take as much pounding as we used to impart on them. Now we need more sleep, and more regular hours of sleep.

All in all I am not that upset about this apparent behavioral switch. I'll see how long it lasts.

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