It took me my entire stay in Ontario to get used to the time zone. Now I’m back in BC and I can’t keep my eyes open after dinner.
I don’t know if it’s travelling itself or the change in time zones but I’m definitely not 20 years old anymore and need to respect the needs of my body after travel.
Sweet dreams.
It’s the last school day before the March break. My ‘to do’ list at work will require a bit of focus to accomplish, but it is achievable… at least if the general day-to-day interruptions are manageable, that’s an unknown that is just part of the job. The good news is that beyond an email home to students and parents before the break, I don’t have anything pressing, that can’t wait until after the break.
All that said, something that often happens when I reach this point in the year, or at the winter break, is that the first couple days of the break I just crash and burn. I fall into a mode where I sleep more than I usually do, and I feel extremely lazy. And sometimes I literally get sick. It’s like my body holds out for the break, then says ‘You made it! OK, you can let go now’, and I get sick.
However, in previous years, I would usually not be sticking to my healthy living routine right now. I’d have the mentality of, ‘ I’ll get back into shape over the break.’ But this year I’ve done some form of exercise 19 out of the last 20 days. Usually I am metaphorically burning my candle at both ends, but I’ve been intentionally getting to bed for an average of about 7 hours of sleep (I usually get 6 to six-and-a-half). And I’m of the mindset that I’m looking forward to the break, not ‘I need a break’.
While saying this all out loud doesn’t mean that my body still won’t crash to some level, it didn’t this past winter vacation, and I feel like I’ve been able to break the crash and burn routine to start my holidays. The next couple days will tell the tale. Now it’s time for my morning meditation and then on to my exercise bike… I’ve got to maintain the positive patterns that are helping break this cycle.
When I was in my early 20’s I went through a period where I had trained myself to lucid dream. It was challenging because often, when I discovered I was dreaming, I’d get excited and wake up, ruining the experience. When it worked, it was amazing! The thing that I enjoyed doing the most was flying.
Last night I had a unique experience. I went to the spare room late at night to meditate, because I wrote for too long in the morning and didn’t have time to both meditate and exercise as part of my morning routine. I lay down rather than sat up and ended up falling asleep with my phone on my chest, moments after hearing the guided meditation end.
Shortly after dozing off I opened my eyes and my body was frozen. I couldn’t willfully move a muscle. I could see my chest rising with my phone on it. I could even see that the reflection in my turned off phone changed with my breathing. However, I couldn’t move a single muscle no matter how hard I tried, because I was still asleep. The first time this happened to me decades earlier, it was a frightening ordeal. But this time as I struggled to raise my hands, I felt them dislodge from my locked body and lift up in my dream state, despite not seeing them move. This control of an invisible body let me know that I was still dreaming. I was dreaming with my eyes open, aware of my body on the bed, phone on my chest, fingers clasped just above my belt buckle.
It didn’t last long, I sat up in my dream and visually I switched to the dream world, seeing a mirror directly in front of me, and looking at my reflection. I wasn’t sure what I should do so I tried to fly. I floated towards the door of the room, got excited to be flying and found myself looking at my waking body, suddenly no longer locked in the sleeping position.
I wiggled my fingers. I saw my phone on my chest, and could see that as my chest raised and fell with my breath, there was a reflection of a picture on the wall that moved in the dark screen. Remembering seeing this movement made me realize that while I was sleeping I wasn’t just dreaming that I could see my body, I actually had my eyes open and was aware of my body.
This was a short but very freaky experience. I was dreaming with my eyes open, simultaneously aware of seeing my physical body and also aware that I had no control over it my my dream state. I’m not sure I’ll be able to replicate this, especially since I had nodded off with the light on, but on most nights if I opened my eyes and saw the world while I dreamt, it would be dark with little detail to see.
I’m going to spend the next few nights trying to see if I can start to lucid dream again. The strategy that worked for me years ago was to tell myself before bed that if I noticed I was dreaming to simply lift my palm in from front of my face. If I could do this in a dream, that meant I had control of my dream… and that meant I could fly!
Sometimes I had to flap my arms other times I could just soar at will. Last night for a brief moment I got to float, and I want to feel the sensation of flying again. I’m not sure I can replicate the wakeful, eyes open, aware of my body sensation while dreaming again? But hopefully I can once again start controlling my dreams and taking to adventures in the air.
I know that I don’t sleep enough, and I know that this can have long term health affects, but I can’t seem to get to bed early. And, I continue to wake up before my alarm, no matter what time I decide to wake up. My alarm has gone off once in 3 weeks and it was a night where I decided to change my wake up time during the night, rather than before bed.
But this morning I feel tired even if it was easy to beat my alarm. I actually stayed in bed until my wife’s alarm went off, but that extra time wasn’t restful as I thought about getting writing and meditation done to start the day. I run weight club today at lunch with the students and I’ll get a small workout in so that’s the time I can make up this morning.
I love working late at night. I enjoy the quiet after everyone is in bed. I usually enjoy waking up early and doing more to start my day before most people even wake up. I don’t love that doing both of these things end up giving me 7 or less hours sleep each night. I’m going to try reading in bed at night, and see if I can get myself to sleep earlier.
Just because I can consistently sleep less than 7 hours a night doesn’t mean that I should do so. There’s too much evidence to suggest this isn’t good for my long term health, and it seems silly to spend so much time exercising and taking care of myself, yet undermining my future with a lack of sleep.
I’ve got my screen dimmed and the tone of my phone’s light to warm colours, but I know the screen isn’t helping me sleep so this will be short.
I fell asleep sitting upright on a chair not too long after dinner and slept for a solid 4 hours in that position. Now I’ve been restless since before 2am. I’ve reached the point where I need to write and set my alarm later, because I don’t think I can wake up before 6am, and I’m not able to fall asleep right now.
It’s one thing to need less sleep than most, another to have insomnia, and still another to mess up my own sleeping patterns by napping before bedtime. So here I am at 3:10am with self-induced insomnia, feeling like I’ve had a crappy night and needing more unconscious time to have a productive day.
15 years ago I would have just started my day. But I can’t do that anymore. I know my limits and I need 3 more hours (hopefully uninterrupted) to have a good day ahead of me. I think writing this rather than laying down aimlessly staring at nothing will give me a sense of accomplishment, and I’ll fall asleep faster. And now that I’ve done my Daily-ink, I can set my alarm a half hour later.
I’ll end by wishing myself sweet dreams. This might be the first morning in weeks I’ll hear my alarm, rather than waking up 5-10 minutes before it. But before I wake up… I need to sleep.
When I go to bed, I can set an alarm and the tell myself to wake up before it goes off. I’ll wake up before the alarm goes at an average better than 9 times out of 10. It doesn’t work when I’m napping. It does t work if I’ve had a few drinks. But on a typical morning, I’ll wake up anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 minutes before my alarm.
However, if I wake up and check the time an hour or more before my alarm, what I can’t do is change the time I plan to wake up. It’s like the original time is locked in, and in a half-sleeping state, I lose the ability to change that time.
This morning I woke up an hour and 25 minutes before my alarm and decided, I’ll get up 30 minutes earlier. Closed my eyes and even dreamt about waking up earlier. Then my eyes popped open 2 minutes before the original time I had planned to get up, allowing me to shut off my alarm before my wife had to hear it. No extra 30 minutes for me this morning.
Despite my inability to change the set time during the night, I’m always puzzled and amazed at how I’m able set my internal clock before going to sleep. How does my body/mind know what time it is? If I woke up at exactly the same time every day, I think this would be more understandable. But I vary my wake up time by over an hour on weekdays and wake up another hour plus later on weekends. And I haven’t heard my alarm in over 2 weeks.
With respect to how we’ve evolved, the inventions clocks is such a new novelty, that there is no way it was a necessarily learned behaviour. Being sensitive to light outside our eyelids is a natural cue to let us know it’s time to get up. But the difference between waking up at 4:45 and 5:30, in total darkness, isn’t something our bodies should just know and be able to do.
How does our body know the difference? How are we able to control an internal clock? And how do we keep track of this while we are asleep, unconscious?
I tend to fall into bad sleep patterns. It’s easy because I like to stay up late and I also like to wake up early. I wish I lived in a country that did siestas.
There is something about being up between 10pm and midnight that I enjoy, even when I’m exhausted. But when I get up well before 6am, a midnight bedtime is a bit hard to do several days in a row. When I was younger, I could live off of 4.5 to 5.5 hours of sleep a night, but as I got older it definitely affected my ability to be productive during the day, and I realized I needed more sleep.
But every now and then I get into the bad habit of staying up way too late. And often that triggers insomnia, which makes matters worse. I need to force myself to go to bed earlier. This is one place in my life where i battle with myself. There is a huge knowing-doing gap.
I still woke up before my alarm this morning, but I’m slow to get going, and needing to talk myself into my workout. I get things done at night at the expense of a productive morning. It’s not a great cycle.
This is just me making it public that I need an earlier bedtime, because for me the public declaration is a good step towards action… or is it non-action when I’m talking about adding more unconsciousness? 😜
Just woke up from a long afternoon nap. I feel great. I know I’ll be up for hours now. I think my body would respond well to living in a country that did siestas. I love staying up late. I love waking up early. I love taking afternoon naps.
Last night I went to sleep around midnight. I was up at 5:30am to do a Zoom call with my uncle in Ontario, and then I had this wonderful afternoon nap. It was a perfect day already and I have hours of awake time still to go. When I retire, I can see this being a regular routine for me. My day will include both watching sun rises and sunsets, and snoozing after lunch. That’s a perfect schedule for me… too bad I can’t make it work before retirement. 😀
I have this awful habit of returning to bad dreams, even after I wake up in the middle of the night. It happened last night at least twice. I was dreaming about a house renovation and the builders added some ridiculous contraption above our counter by the sink to dispense soap. In was an ugly monstrosity and it leaked.
I was trying to get this block-headed, massive worker to remove it, but he would only try to fix it. Then he’d move on and I’d have to call him back. This was one of many complaints I had that was not being fixed. During the dream, I woke up, and was relieved that it was just a dream. Then I shut my eyes again, and jumped right back into the stressful dream.
Why?
Why would I want to return to an awful dream where no matter what I did, things were not working out?
Then I woke again. This time, I’m mad at myself for going back into the same dream, and I tell myself to think of something different. Then I fall asleep and return to this never-ending, overly stressful dream.
This only seems to happen with stressful dreams. Good dreams are hard to get back into. Bad dreams continue. They live on past short wake-ups despite being aware of how silly they are, and how annoying they are.
If anyone has any suggestions to change this please let me know. I’m not a fan of waking up tired in the morning after a night of stressful dreams that could have ended 2-3 times had I just moved on after waking up.
I wonder if this is related to my age, or if there are some other factors, but my ability to take power naps has changed. I used to be able to lie down for a quick nap, and set an alarm for 15-20, maybe 25 minutes. When my alarm went off, I could just pop up and continue with my day, feeling fully refreshed.
Now, 25-30 minutes never seems like it’s enough. If I set an alarm for a power nap these days, the alarm because an annoying interruption, before going back to sleep again… and if I do force myself to get up, I certainly don’t feel refreshed.
I also find that I need a bit more sleep at night too. That’s not very surprising because I used to need only 5-6 hours sleep, and it’s probably good that I get a bit more than that as a norm. Still, I miss my power naps. I miss that feeling like I’ve supercharged myself in a short burst, preparing myself to tackle the day with a full battery.
I think I’m going to experiment a bit in the coming weekends (and occasional evenings) and see if I can’t do a sort of a reset… Maybe I’ve just gotten used to needing more time because I have given myself permission to take more time. I’m going to set my alarm for 20 minutes when I nap and stick to that time. Any longer and it’s not a power nap, it’s just an old guy snoring on the couch. 🤣
