Night Owls and Early Birds

I love to stay up late. Sometimes it's for a good cause, such as writing articles for Associated Content. More frequently, though, staying up late is just my leisure activities not ending until I darn well please. Is this a bad habit or just my putting a positive spin on insomnia?

I have always had a hard time falling asleep. As a child I just suffered through it. And as an adult the drug-free methods - drinking chamomile tea, aromatherapy, and the like - just don't cut it. Now that I'm an adult, thank goodness, I can take Ambien and make sleep happen.

Is insomnia a medical condition or just a person's natural tendency? Maybe not falling asleep until later is part of someone's personality. My creativity and motivation peak later at night. That is when I feel most alive. Lavender linen spray and counting sheep? Forget it. The night is still young.

Nightowlnet.com is a site that sheds light on some of these things. It describes perceived differences between night owls and early birds. They explain how some people keep a night owl's schedule due to outside influences such as a job that requires them to stay up late. They are not true night owls, just as night owls forced to be early birds by their schedules are not true early birds.

Certainly the workplace has its effect on sleep schedules, most often in sync with an early bird's schedule. When forced to keep this kind of schedule, night owls can experience fatigue. And it is not that night owls sleep more, necessarily, but that their sleep starts later and ends sooner.

The wonderful site devoted to cleaning and organization, Flylady.com , was a part of my life a few years ago. You can read articles and sign up to receive e-mails. They motivate and inspire you have create order in your life and reduce clutter. I became disillusioned with it, however, because one of their directives was that you should go to bed around ten at night and be the first one up in the morning. Going to bed at midnight is a far more reasonable goal for me, and I have an early bird husband. He will spring out of bed at six in the morning, needs no caffeine to feel alert, and will tell you he "feels great!" I can't compete with that.

I sometimes think of myself as lazy because I get up so late in the morning, but I do accomplish as much in a day as those who rise early.

Source:
www.nightowlnet.com/index.htm