Night Owl

As long as I can remember, I’ve hated to get up early. “Early to bed, early to rise” is a totally obscene sentiment to me and I’ve always referred to alarm clocks as the “morning warning”. During periods of unemployment, when I’m able to set my own hours, my typical pattern is to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning and sleep until around noon or so. Infamous J teases me, telling me that I must be part vampire.

I was never one of those “crack of dawn” kids, except, perhaps, on Christmas morning. Otherwise, I’d happily sleep until noon.

When I was in high school, classes started at the ungodly time of 7:30 am. I never got used to it, always functioning on autopilot, dragging anchor every day until around noon or so.

In college, I got as many afternoon classes as possible, as this suited both my sleeping schedule and was more convenient for my “extracurricular activities”. However, I couldn’t get them all that way, and so I ended up ditching a lot of morning classes, as I’d be worn out from the night before.

When I was on the police force, we worked swing shifts, and I always felt best when working second. I didn’t have to get up with an alarm clock, yet I got to sleep the later part of the night. Oddly enough, I didn’t like third any better than first, as the sleeping time didn’t really match my natural rhythms, either. Many times when on third, I’d get what I call “the wideawakes”, that is, no matter how tired I was, I’d lie there wide awake, anyway.

When having first shift jobs as an adult, the situation was much the same as when I was in high school. No matter how long I’d been having to get up early, I'd never get used to it and I’d drag anchor for the first half of the work day. Additionally, I tend to be a bastard on wheels early in the morning, and prefer to just work quietly on autopilot, and not having anyone mess with me until the afternoon. I did my best to avoid the chirpy morning people until afternoon, and about the time they’d start lagging, I’d be picking up.

On the weekends, I’d easily revert to my natural sleep patterns without a hitch. I’ve known many people who don’t like getting up early, but they get used to having to do it, that they even wake up early on their days off, which I can’t imagine ever happening to me.

Interestingly enough, with my lifestyle, quite a bit of my socializing is done during the day, sometimes even rather early in the morning. Of course, this is mainly for practical and logistical purposes. But there’s a big difference between being awake and being able to lounge around comfortably and do what I want, and being awake and having to rush around, get dressed, and go somewhere at that hour.

So tell me, what are you, early bird or night owl?