At this point, I’ve pretty much given up on maintaining a normal human sleep schedule, mainly because I’m clearly an alien. I seem to require the same total amount of sleep, ie about 1/3 of my day, like everyone else. Unfortunately, I appear to be designed for a 30-36 hour day.

My job doesn’t help; sometimes I’ll be able to get myself into a relatively normal sleeping schedule, going to bed at 11, waking up at 7, all that. Then something will happen for work that keeps me up all night and sleeping during the day, and I’m screwed for WEEKS. Suddenly I’m going to bed at 11, tossing and turning until 1:30, and then not able to get out of the sack until 8:30 in the freaking morning, and tired like a 20-inch spinning rim. (Get it? Rims have tires on ’em! Nevermind. Jerks.)

From time to time I get the opposite extreme, which is actually quite awesome; I’m able to fall right asleep at 9:30 or 10pm, and I’m up at 5 or 6 in the morning and can do things around the house or get some exercise before driving into the office at 7. It’s just flat out kick-ASS. And it happens every couple of months for no apparent reason, and usually lasts a couple of weeks until I have some kind of all night outage at work, which throws me right back into falling asleep at 3am and waking at 9.

I have a hard time with sleep transitions. It usually takes me an hour to fall asleep, and I have a VERY hard time getting up, particularly if I’ve had less than 8 hours. On weekends, of course, all bets are off; I’ll either completely wake up at 7 am with no chance of returning to sleep (usually after staying up until 3 the night before), or I’m in the oven until 1pm and uselessly groggy for the rest of the day. It’s almost as if my body wants me to stay awake for 20 hours or so, and then sleep for 10. If only my busy schedule would permit this.

I’ve tried just about everything to help me fall asleep; warm milk, a little pre-sleep nooky, truly vast amounts of alcohol, nothing seems to make a significant difference. And I hate lying in bed and not DOING anything. If I’m asleep or watching TV, bed is totally awesome, but if I’m just LYING there, then I’m thinking. And it’s usually not anything good. When it IS something good, I’ll never remember it the next day, and I hate to get up and write it down for fear of totally screwing my sleep for the night.

When I sleep, I dream about people beating on my wife’s new car with baseball bats, which sends me into a screaming tantrum. I lead a terrifying life.

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