Storyworth: Night Owls
Oct. 30th, 2020 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillibetAre you a morning person or an evening person?
I am definitely an evening person. I have enormous trouble waking up in the morning--I get used to alarms very quickly and happily sleep right through them, or play what Jason and I like to call “snooze tag,” sometimes for hours if there’s no particular reason to get out of bed.
When I was a child I would read in bed, sometimes long after my mother had come through to check on me on her way to bed. She would marvel at my ability to sleep, coming in on weekends like a town crier to announce “Elizabeth! It’s nine o’clock!” “Elizabeth, it’s ten o’clock!” “Elizabeth, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning!”
When Jason and I were first dating, I was amused to find out that his mother and mine both sang the same little song to annoy us out of bed in the morning: “Good morning to you! Good morning to you! We’re all in our places with bright shining faces. Oh this is the way to start a new day!” Turns out that his mother got it from her mother, who learned it, as mine did, at teachers college.
I have occasionally had to function as a morning person, getting up early for school, or work. When that happens, I tend to sleep in shifts, falling asleep for a few hours as soon as I get home, then being up for several hours in the evening before getting to bed for an additional four or five hours’ rest.
Many morning people I know talk about the hush of the early morning hours and I know exactly what they mean, I just experience them at the other end of the day. My favorite working hours tend to be midnight to 3am, as the rest of the world falls asleep, the distractions dissipate, and the world is still.
I had an argument with a boss once when I was working the 11am-8pm shift and was late to work. I agreed that was wrong and promised to do my best not to make it a habit. And then she said “It’s not as if we were asking you to be here at 8am!” I pointed out that it was exactly like that--that I didn’t get home until 9, still had to make dinner and spend a couple of hours winding down before bed. She seemed absolutely shocked that I didn’t automatically wake up at 6am, like she did.
When left to our own natural schedules, Jason and I tend to fall into a pattern of getting to bed around 2am and rising between ten and eleven. Luckily, Alice is also a natural night owl and was perfectly happy as a baby to stay up until around 10pm and sleep for twelve hours, with an extra three-hour nap in the afternoon. I know many moms who swear their kids wake up at 5:30am no matter what and I’m not sure how we would have coped if Alice had been one of those babies.
Of course, pretty soon she started preschool. That started at 9am her first year and 8:30am her second year, so by the time she had to be at kindergarten by 8:10am, we were more or less resigned to our morning schedule. But we all still enjoy it when circumstances allow us to sleep until we wake up...around noon.
I am definitely an evening person. I have enormous trouble waking up in the morning--I get used to alarms very quickly and happily sleep right through them, or play what Jason and I like to call “snooze tag,” sometimes for hours if there’s no particular reason to get out of bed.
When I was a child I would read in bed, sometimes long after my mother had come through to check on me on her way to bed. She would marvel at my ability to sleep, coming in on weekends like a town crier to announce “Elizabeth! It’s nine o’clock!” “Elizabeth, it’s ten o’clock!” “Elizabeth, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning!”
When Jason and I were first dating, I was amused to find out that his mother and mine both sang the same little song to annoy us out of bed in the morning: “Good morning to you! Good morning to you! We’re all in our places with bright shining faces. Oh this is the way to start a new day!” Turns out that his mother got it from her mother, who learned it, as mine did, at teachers college.
I have occasionally had to function as a morning person, getting up early for school, or work. When that happens, I tend to sleep in shifts, falling asleep for a few hours as soon as I get home, then being up for several hours in the evening before getting to bed for an additional four or five hours’ rest.
Many morning people I know talk about the hush of the early morning hours and I know exactly what they mean, I just experience them at the other end of the day. My favorite working hours tend to be midnight to 3am, as the rest of the world falls asleep, the distractions dissipate, and the world is still.
I had an argument with a boss once when I was working the 11am-8pm shift and was late to work. I agreed that was wrong and promised to do my best not to make it a habit. And then she said “It’s not as if we were asking you to be here at 8am!” I pointed out that it was exactly like that--that I didn’t get home until 9, still had to make dinner and spend a couple of hours winding down before bed. She seemed absolutely shocked that I didn’t automatically wake up at 6am, like she did.
When left to our own natural schedules, Jason and I tend to fall into a pattern of getting to bed around 2am and rising between ten and eleven. Luckily, Alice is also a natural night owl and was perfectly happy as a baby to stay up until around 10pm and sleep for twelve hours, with an extra three-hour nap in the afternoon. I know many moms who swear their kids wake up at 5:30am no matter what and I’m not sure how we would have coped if Alice had been one of those babies.
Of course, pretty soon she started preschool. That started at 9am her first year and 8:30am her second year, so by the time she had to be at kindergarten by 8:10am, we were more or less resigned to our morning schedule. But we all still enjoy it when circumstances allow us to sleep until we wake up...around noon.
