For most of the last 5 years, I’ve been having weird sleep hours. I’m usually up late, past 2 or 3AM on average, waking up any time between 10AM and 4PM depending on when I go to bed or if I have class or not. Being unemployed as I am, this hadn’t changed for a while. It actually got worse for a while. Let us establish that I’m not a morning person whatsoever. I’m a creature of the night. I like night time. I like being up. That’s just how I am. However, for the past week and a half, I’ve had this uncanny and uncontrollable ability of waking up before dawn and not being able to go back to sleep. It started last Friday night when I went to bed at a reasonable hour (let’s say 1AM). I woke up on Saturday at 6AM. The next night I went to bed around 12AM and woke up at 5AM. This has really messed up my day. I don’t know what to do in the mornings. I’m not used to being up in the early mornings so I’ve been wasting a lot of time. I get tired in the later afternoon and sometimes nap (which doesn’t at all help my sleep at night). Plus I usually work out in the evenings, which has pretty much gone out the window.
Long story short, I need to fix my routine to accommodate this new occurrence. I still haven’t figured out why it’s happening, but I find that it’s somewhat of a blessing, somewhat of a curse. I sleep more regularly now but I don’t know if I’m really getting enough sleep anymore. I used to be able to sleep ten hours a day whenever, now I can’t even get back to sleep in the mornings. Weird thing is, when I take a nap and wake up a few hours later, I could easily fall back asleep again, but I don’t because it’d mess me up even more.
This morning was interesting, though. I had a dream where I woke up around 9AM and was surprised that I broke the “curse” despite going to bed before midnight (if I go to bed at 5AM, 9AM is when I would wake up now). I soon actually woke up from this dream and checked the clock. It was 5:30AM. I was not happy. Fortunately, I was actually able to fall back asleep and wake up around 8AM. Perhaps I’m actually making some progress.