23 January 2004 Friday

sleeping late: a lost art

i used to be so good at this. i had a whole reputation on staying up to random, extreme hours of the night/early morning… and on the days i had to get up early, sometimes i’d do that. but regardless of being able to sleep in or not… it really is true that the healthiest sleep is in night hours, before the sun rises. i was never really able to do it… it was really really hard for me to sleep during anything called ”normal” sleeping hours.

so i’d be up til 3, sometimes 5, or 7am… doing stuff; sometimes productive, usually not at all. then i met this boy, who, for whatever reason, liked to sleep early. actually, it wasn’t even that.—he liked to wake up early. i’m talking ~7am, consistently, for no reason at all. even on saturdays! yes, well.. when one insists on waking up at that time everyday, one tends to sleep fairly early as well. Ten pm became ’late’. i had to keep up. but it was good for me; i ended up waking earlier than him in the mornings, and i really liked putting everything down/aside to get into bed around 8pm or 9… what ended up holding all that up, is the whole ”9pm starts night minutes on cellphones” thing. that, and the best tv shows are on from 8-10. sometimes even til 11. that all really puts a hinge in my diligent sleeping-early thing. and i was happy saying ’screw the tv’ for quite a while, also. and i slept early. and i woke early. and i was very pleased with it all…

and i’m starting to talk in circles now and i’m losing my lucidity, because you see, the time is now 1:46 pm and the thing and the point and the inspiration for this posting in the firstplace, is that in the past few weeks i have not been sleeping early. and in the past few days particularly, i have been sleeping rather late. old-characteristically late, almost. 3am the other night, i think.. 5:30am last night.. really not totally necessary.

so, as i’m listening to the sounds of someone sleeping soundly, i really wonder why i’m still up? sleep now, everything else later. i insist.