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the morning is trying to kill me
Feb. 15th, 2007 09:59 pmArgh. As previously mentioned, this week is Teh Week From Hell workwise. Some of the schools in this area have their half-term this week, meaning that in addition to my regular students, I have 2 hours of group revision classes every day plus random extra boarding school students slotted in around the place. This means that, rather than doing a couple of hours work a day, I'm working more-or-less full time.
Now, people who don't have delayed sleep phase just can't understand what my problem is. You need to be up by 9.30am, so you go to bed before midnight, right? Well, no - it's not that simple for me. If I try to go to bed when not actually sleepy, I will toss and turn for literally hours. And likely, get myself so stressed up that sleep becomes impossible even when I am tired.
Likewise, people think that if a person gets up in the morning, they'll just magically be sleepy at the time they need to go to bed. But again, that doesn't work for me. I can sit on the sofa getting more and more and more tired, and be putting on my pyjamas at 10pm to go to bed - then it'll hit my "most awake" time of 10.20pm and I'll be instantly so wide-awake and wired that I can't possibly sleep until gone 2am anyway.
Then there is the case of my allergies. Last night I was in bed at 1.30am, and asleep by 2.30am, meaning I should have theoretically been capable of getting out of bed at 9.30am this morning. But I had a monstrous snot attack in the night and slept with my mouth open for a while (having tremendously fun lucid science-fiction dreams!), so when my alarm went off I was all exhausted, brain-foggy and confused from the oxygen overdose, as well as achy as hell in my joints. Eventually staggered out of bed like a newborn foal at 10.20am, limbs all shaky and flailing, and would've been late for work had I been forced to take public transport.
At the moment I am managing to get myself to work for an 11am start, but it's hell. I have permanent jetlag in my own time zone, and it rarely gets any better, and most people cannot even begin to understand what it's like. Here I am on Thursday - and I'm doing these hours through to next Saturday. And I've been running on a 2.5 to 3 hour per night sleep deficit for the past 4 nights - and I have 101 health conditions that play up when I don't get enough sleep. Yay.
Now, people who don't have delayed sleep phase just can't understand what my problem is. You need to be up by 9.30am, so you go to bed before midnight, right? Well, no - it's not that simple for me. If I try to go to bed when not actually sleepy, I will toss and turn for literally hours. And likely, get myself so stressed up that sleep becomes impossible even when I am tired.
Likewise, people think that if a person gets up in the morning, they'll just magically be sleepy at the time they need to go to bed. But again, that doesn't work for me. I can sit on the sofa getting more and more and more tired, and be putting on my pyjamas at 10pm to go to bed - then it'll hit my "most awake" time of 10.20pm and I'll be instantly so wide-awake and wired that I can't possibly sleep until gone 2am anyway.
Then there is the case of my allergies. Last night I was in bed at 1.30am, and asleep by 2.30am, meaning I should have theoretically been capable of getting out of bed at 9.30am this morning. But I had a monstrous snot attack in the night and slept with my mouth open for a while (having tremendously fun lucid science-fiction dreams!), so when my alarm went off I was all exhausted, brain-foggy and confused from the oxygen overdose, as well as achy as hell in my joints. Eventually staggered out of bed like a newborn foal at 10.20am, limbs all shaky and flailing, and would've been late for work had I been forced to take public transport.
At the moment I am managing to get myself to work for an 11am start, but it's hell. I have permanent jetlag in my own time zone, and it rarely gets any better, and most people cannot even begin to understand what it's like. Here I am on Thursday - and I'm doing these hours through to next Saturday. And I've been running on a 2.5 to 3 hour per night sleep deficit for the past 4 nights - and I have 101 health conditions that play up when I don't get enough sleep. Yay.
