For as long as I can remember, I've been sort of a creature of the night. I'm used to staying up till all hours of the night. It's not that I can't fall asleep, it's just that I don't really care to. Well, now that I've moved out and am temporarily sharing my living space, I'm making a few changes. Rather than stay up till the early hours of the morning and sleeping in till work, I'm going to sleep early and waking up several hours before I technically need to.

I'm not sure how it started, but I've really come to think of sleep as a waste of time. Every hour I'm asleep is just an hour that I could have been doing something "productive". Aside from the obvious physical and mental side effects of not sleeping, I don't really see the point spending your "free" time unconscious. I have a naturally curious mind and I do a lot of learning and experimenting on my own time. In my own perfect world, each day would last 32 hours. This would give me a full 8 hours of sleep while allowing the normal 24 hours for work, personal projects, recreational activities, a little workout, and hanging with friends. However, this is not how the world works and I have to deal with it. Which is why I usually stay up late. That is until now.

My new roommate has a job as a surgical technician, which requires him to be up fairly early to make the drive to work in the morning. As a courtesy to him, I've joined him in his sleep pattern. While this normally night seem like a bad thing, I've actually enjoyed it. Whether you stay up late and then sleep in, or go to be early and then wake up early, you get the same mount of sleep. The strange thing is that when I go to sleep early, I actually feel more rested in the morning than if I had received the same amount of sleep starting late into the morning. The transition hasn't been difficult at all, requiring a mere habitual change rather than the physical change I thought it might. All in all, I think this change is going to be really good for me.

posted by Christopher Schnese