Regarding the hour

[prog]

A weblog from someone with similar sleep patterns as me, but putting some actual research into it, including consulting physicians. One gave the person an actual diagnosis I have not heard of before: Delayed Sleep-Phase Syndrome.

That certainly gives me pause for thought. I was also struck by the writer's description of spending hours lying awake after being sent to bed, as a child. By gar, my own bedtimes were just so, night after night. I haven't thought about it in a long time, but I absolutely remember the truth of it. Have I been shifted forward like this my whole life?

And now that I have a new straw to grasp at, should I try again to do something about it?

Comments

me too!

[taskboy3000.livejournal.com]

Without having a set work schedule, it is easy to "time slip" into PST. In the last several weeks, I have been staying up until 2AM and getting up at 10A. To combat this, as I have in the past, I need the discipline of both an alarm clock and some kind of regular excerise. As I write this, I'm about to head off for a walk.

As for having a busy brain that won't STFU, I find that excerise is the key. It burns off the extra fuel and so starves the brain into quiescence. :-)

Also, cut back on coffee after 6pm. I'm looking at you, diesel-head...

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

How much of a "disability" is it to you these days? There will be a certain amount of stress associated with trying to force yourself into a schedule you're not suited for. OTOH, what do you trade for that?

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent question. It seems to me that part of the point of being self-employed is the ability to keep whatever schedule suits you best (so long as stuff still gets done, of course).

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Yeah. My own shifted schedule works well for me as a grad student. When I get an actual job, of course...well, we'll see.

My friend silkblade also has DSPS. Unfortunately, when I went to MIT Medical a few years ago about it, the doctor there was so condescending and dismissive that it soured me on trying to do anything about it.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Right. And the fact is that every job I've held since 1998 hasn't really cared when I showed up, so long as I appeared to be doing work. So I've actually been suffering from / getting away with this for a long time.

Right now, the main reasons I've (sometimes) longed for a more normal sleep schedule include my self-observed psychological dependence on sunlight, and my wish to be in synch with my friends so that their evening social events don't happen around my personal lunchtime.

Possible solution to the sunlight thing, from what I'm reading: bright indoor lighting. Well, shoot, this can be arranged. Yes, in fact, the lighting in my apartment / office tends to be dim.

The social thing is another bag of rocks. Going to be social effectively results in a half-day of work that day, since I usually don't wanna do work after coming home from something like that. I could go to less events, but that would make me sad. And trying to force a change in my sleep cycle for that, making myself physically suffer in order to make my party-going work better, seems perverse somehow. So I dunno.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. I suffered from chronic insomnia until my late 20's, and spent endless childhood hours lying awake. In my grad student days I would work until 2 am, be in bed by 3 am and get up around 11 am. Eight hours sleep, shifted by five hours. Fortunately I didn't have many morning classes.

Poor diet, not much physical activity and constant stress were probably contributors. Now that I'm working for myself again I tend to get up a little later and go to bed a little later, but not much. The key difference seems to me to be one of flexibility rather than changing a fixed pattern. That is, healthier living has given me a more flexible sleep-cycle, so I can adjust to a more normal pattern fairly easily. No coffee after 1 or 2 pm, and less coffee overall, helps as well. But the supposition that some of us have phase-shifted sleep cycles certainly would explain my own childhood and early adult experience perfectly.

One could tell an evolutionary just-so story about this, too, for whatever small worth that has: it would certainly benefit the tribe if a few people were phase-shifted, making it easier to maintain a night watch.

[daerr.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's really interesting. And it led me over to Non-24 hour sleep phase syndrome, which seems to describe my sleep issues perfectly. Left to myself my schedule rotates around the clock pretty quickly.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

There's also circadiana_atom, though it's rather technical.