Hey Everyone,
We've had discussions asking whether people are Early Birds (morning people,) Night Owls (night people,) or, the modern addition -- the Permanently Exhausted Pigeon -- but I was thinking about this when I woke up around 3 AM this morning, despite yesterday being fairly hectic.
My whole life, I have always been an Early Bird. However, because I have worked every shift there is (including the night shift,) my inner sleeping mechanism has been "broken" for years. I can't stay up late and just "sleep in later," because no matter what, my system always wants to revert back to early mornings. I've lived and stayed in a few different time zones, and always want to wake up early.
These days, my ideal waking time is around 4 - 4:30 AM.
If I travel with company or stay with friends, I have to explain this, and it often leads to me getting up early and reading in closets, bathrooms, or other tucked-away spaces where I won't disturb others until they get up.
If I try to adapt to my night owl friends, I'll stay up with them until 2 or 3 AM -- but I'll still wake up at 6 or 7 AM because my system will refuse to go back to sleep (unless I'm sick, which I will eventually be if I try to keep it up.) When I worked nights, it was an odd phenomenon. I'd be dragging at first, but around 2 AM, I could literally feel my engines starting to rev up and prepare for takeoff.
I have sometimes wondered what would happen if I married a night owl, and how we'd have to probably arrange date nights in which were a compromise for our very different natural sleeping/waking times. (Sometimes, a "date night" for me might look more like a lunch date.)
Now of course, since most of us have to adjust to less-than-ideal schedules anyway due to work, school, church, and family, we're probably all a version of a Permanently Exhausted Pigeon anyway.
But do you think you would be able to adapt to someone with a much different biological clock than your own?
* What's your own personal waking/sleep schedule like?
* Do you think you'd have a hard time getting used to someone who was awake when you wanted to sleep, or sleeping when you wanted to go out?
* What kinds of compromises do you see yourself having to make?
* For marrieds and/or people who have experience living with family, roommates, etc. who have very different sleeping schedules, how have you coped?
* Do you think marrying "a different kind of bird" (Early Bird vs. Night Owl, etc.) could be a dealbreaker?
None of this is meant to be terribly serious -- I just thought it would be an interesting discussion, especially since I know I've been in plenty of situations where I had to be careful not to wake anyone else up.
How about you?
We've had discussions asking whether people are Early Birds (morning people,) Night Owls (night people,) or, the modern addition -- the Permanently Exhausted Pigeon -- but I was thinking about this when I woke up around 3 AM this morning, despite yesterday being fairly hectic.
My whole life, I have always been an Early Bird. However, because I have worked every shift there is (including the night shift,) my inner sleeping mechanism has been "broken" for years. I can't stay up late and just "sleep in later," because no matter what, my system always wants to revert back to early mornings. I've lived and stayed in a few different time zones, and always want to wake up early.
These days, my ideal waking time is around 4 - 4:30 AM.
If I travel with company or stay with friends, I have to explain this, and it often leads to me getting up early and reading in closets, bathrooms, or other tucked-away spaces where I won't disturb others until they get up.
If I try to adapt to my night owl friends, I'll stay up with them until 2 or 3 AM -- but I'll still wake up at 6 or 7 AM because my system will refuse to go back to sleep (unless I'm sick, which I will eventually be if I try to keep it up.) When I worked nights, it was an odd phenomenon. I'd be dragging at first, but around 2 AM, I could literally feel my engines starting to rev up and prepare for takeoff.
I have sometimes wondered what would happen if I married a night owl, and how we'd have to probably arrange date nights in which were a compromise for our very different natural sleeping/waking times. (Sometimes, a "date night" for me might look more like a lunch date.)
Now of course, since most of us have to adjust to less-than-ideal schedules anyway due to work, school, church, and family, we're probably all a version of a Permanently Exhausted Pigeon anyway.
But do you think you would be able to adapt to someone with a much different biological clock than your own?
* What's your own personal waking/sleep schedule like?
* Do you think you'd have a hard time getting used to someone who was awake when you wanted to sleep, or sleeping when you wanted to go out?
* What kinds of compromises do you see yourself having to make?
* For marrieds and/or people who have experience living with family, roommates, etc. who have very different sleeping schedules, how have you coped?
* Do you think marrying "a different kind of bird" (Early Bird vs. Night Owl, etc.) could be a dealbreaker?
None of this is meant to be terribly serious -- I just thought it would be an interesting discussion, especially since I know I've been in plenty of situations where I had to be careful not to wake anyone else up.
How about you?
) and just giggled and babbled in my crib until my mom would wake up (she actually was awake but still just rested a bit as I had no needs), I was fine by myself.
in later teen years.. well, I usually tried to go for a lunch.. had to have some perks in life. 
