I Got 8 Hours of Sleep Last Night!

 

A virtual friend on Facebook wrote that recently she's been feeling like it's 10 or 11 at night when it's only 6 or 7. Lately, I've been feeling the same way too.

Call it the coronavirus lockdown.  Call it retirement.  Call it a combination of coronavirus lockdown and retirement, but my circadean rhythms are completely out of whack. 

Just last month, I found it impossible to go to sleep before 1 a.m., and some nights found me up until 3 or 4 a.m.  Lately, I can't stay awake past 9:00 p.m., and have fallen asleep in front of the television or at my PC regardless of how compelling the entertainment has been.

And then I wake up after only two or three hours and can't go back to sleep at all.  I've tried to make the best of it and have gotten some quality reading time in between the hours of 4:00 and 7:00 a.m.  Lately, those have been my most lucid hours. But for most of the daylight-time day, I've been a groggy mess, running on only three of four hours of sleep, napping three or four times a day but never getting any real rest. For the past few weeks, my average waking time has been around 5:30 a.m., but as recently as last October, it was closer to 10:00.

Insomnia: you're never fully asleep and you're never fully awake.

I've tried to make the best of it and just go with the flow.  What difference does it make at what hours I sleep and at what hours I'm awake, as long as I'm getting enough hours of sleep somewhere in there?  I can be a night owl one month and a morning lark the next.  But in practice, my body gets confused, and wants to stay awake when I'm trying to sleep and tries to go to sleep when I intend to be awake.

So last night, when I found myself nodding out at 10:00 p.m., I went to bed and was fast asleep by 11:00.  Although I fully expected to awaken again after only a couple of hours, I was delighted that the next thing I heard was the radio alarm going off at 7:00 a.m.  Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep!  I felt like a new man all day.

Is this the start of a new sleep cycle?  Can I repeat last night's results this evening?  Or will my well-rested brain wake itself up in the middle of the night and refuse to quiet down again?  Oh sweet mysteries of Morpheus.  When will you next take me into your embrace, and when will you next cast me asunder?