Finding the Groove

This has been a great month, schedule-wise! No travel, and I've generally been able to sleep and work on a cycle that works for me. Of course, I've still had the occasional setback - a lunch meeting, early teleconference, neighbors doing construction, Superman running sprints above my head, or some other pre-afternoon event. Overall though, it's been great and I've settled into a routine that's been very productive.

What I've noticed is that I basically flip my day upside down. "Normal" people get up, head to work, then come home and have a few hours of wind-down time before bed. I get up, have a few hours of wind-up time, work, then relax for a bit before bed. My morning is spent doing things most people do in the evening.

I've settled pretty consistently into a 2:00am to 10:30am sleep schedule. The first two or three hours of my day are spent sipping coffee, checking for important work e-mails, catching up on personal reading, the news, and of course, Facebook. Around 12:30 or 1:00, I eat breakfast, shower, and prepare to really dig into work around 2:00pm.

My peak time of productivity doesn't really come until around 7:00pm though. I spend the early afternoon doing organizational stuff, making phone calls to clients who work "regular" hours, catching up on job-related reading and news, and other things that don't take a whole lot of intense brainpower and focus. Around 6:00 or 7:00 though, I start writing. My best time to actually complete projects is from 7:00pm to 10:00pm. This is where I get in The Zone and don't even notice time passing. I'm always shocked when I look up and see how late it is, and I often work well past 10pm.

There's a downside (or two) to this schedule though. My social life suffers. In order to spend time with my friends - who get together in the evening after their work hours - I have to sacrifice my own productive work hours. I have to interact with clients during times my brain is toast. I don't get much relaxing "me" time either. Mornings are spent trying to gear up and so I do work-like things that prep my brain for work later in the day. I have a few hours between the time I stop working and bedtime - but everything in the world outside is closed, so I'm limited to relaxing in my own living room. Not really my style. I'd rather go out, walk down to the beach, have dinner somewhere, hear some music. Unfortunately, that's not gonna happen after 10pm on a weeknight where I live.

Still, the positive side outweighs the negative. I'm getting a lot more done now that I've accepted that my best time to be productive is long after everyone else has ended their day. My creativity is coming back, and my analysis is deeper and better than it's been since grad school - when I kept a similar schedule, oddly enough. My brain makes different types of connections at 7pm than it does at 2pm, and this has consequences for my work. Accepting that fact has been liberating, and has improved my life significantly.

I'm feeling healthy and alert, staying spiritually grounded - and I've even lost weight! It's like my whole being has clicked into place now that I'm honoring my own circadian rhythm. Mind, body and spirit are working together again rather than against one another. I've even found ways to maintain a social life by setting aside whole days for fun with friends rather than trying to fit them into a few hours that aren't the right hours. This means that I'm spending less time with some friends, but I've also made some new ones and that's been wonderful too!

I don't know how long this will last. Eventually, I'll be doing fieldwork again rather than analysis and library research. Many of my clients are still in a different time zone, which will sometimes affect my routine. But for now, I'm embracing my true rhythm and enjoying this rare chance to be ME!

Are you a lark? An owl? Maybe a hyena?

Check out this article and find out! Then choose your career specialty wisely.

It's aimed at physicians, but much of it can apply to any career path. Thanks to Danielle of the Night Owl list for sharing this.

Enjoy!

One of Those Days!

One of those GOOD days, that is! :-)

I woke up at 9:00am sharp today feeling GREAT! It's not like I jumped out of bed singing, but I imagine that what I felt was, well, somewhat normal for a change. These are the days that are so rare that I can count them on one hand. And today was one of them!!!

I opened my eyes right away, looked at the clock, sat up and *gasp* got out of bed! My body worked. My brain worked. I was STARVING. I had energy. It was...strange.

While I waited for my Coffeebot to brew up a pot, I cleaned my kitchen. I mean really cleaned it. Did the dishes, cleaned the counters, scrubbed vegan stew splatters off the stove, swept the floor. All before 9:30am. Who knew???

I simultaneously love and loathe these rare mornings. I love feeling what "normal" is like, and getting things accomplished early in the morning. Okay, so 9:00am isn't exactly the crack of dawn. But for me? It's early. Even when I'm awake by then, I usually can't think straight, walk straight, or get anything of value done before noon. So this makes me happy. :-D

I loathe them because I know it's a rare and special treat. Tomorrow, it'll be back to my normal and waking up will be my biggest struggle of the day. It'll be an obstacle to overcome again rather than a joy. It's hard to actually know what I'm missing, to feel in every cell of my body what my mornings would be like if I didn't have DSPS. These wonderful, energetic mornings remind me of how screwed up I really am.

So I turn last night over and over in my mind. What was different? I come up flat. Nothing. I worked until 10:30pm, analyzing data, writing, and organizing photos from the field. I watched a couple hours of tv - Last Restaurant Standing, Food Network Challenge. Hmm...they're both food shows! Nah. Probably not relevant. I went to bed and read until about 2:15am. Started a new book, Guests of the Sheik. It's an ethnography of an Iraqi village. Bottom line? A pretty typical night for me. Not a thing out of the ordinary.

The last week was tough though. My circadian rhythm was thrown all over the map. I flew to Dallas, then to Chicago, and had to work bright and early in the morning. I only got 1 or 2 hours of sleep a night for much of that trip. When I got home, it took me about an equal number of days to catch up. I slept 10 or 11 hours a night on Friday and Saturday nights. I was almost late to a 3pm party on Sunday. On Monday, I slept about 8 hours. Then? On Tuesday? 6 hours and 45 minutes. And I felt refreshed and energetic!

Maybe I should skip sleep more often? Shift my sleep schedule to almost none some days and half the day on other days? Would my body somehow move back to a middle ground then?

I don't know. I don't understand it, but for today, I'll take it!

YES!!!!!!

Okay, maybe I'm a dork but I hang out at Disneyland sometimes. I find it creatively inspiring, a lot of fun and best of all they're open late. The only problem is that I end up going alone because everybody else seems to think they have to get there at the crack of dawn.

My sister? 6:30am

My friends? 10:00am

Online Disney groups? 8 or 9am

But today I found a Meetup group for annual passholders that meets no earlier than 1:00pm and often later!!!! Just learned that the organizer is a Night Person. He is one of My People. This is a rare thing in the world of organized get-togethers. Any other Night Owl Disneyland fans out there? Join us!

Disneyland DAPS Meetup

This simple thing makes my whole week! :-)

Sleep Debt

This last trip was a rough one. I had the worst sleep hangover one day, to the point where it was probably dangerous for me to be driving. I had fewer than four hours of sleep that night, and if I'd closed my eyes for a second during my two hour commute to an early appointment, I would have fallen asleep. I was also severely nauseated, couldn't eat or even drink coffee (!), and couldn't think straight for my first few awake hours. Changing time zones - although absolutely necessary for my work - does not agree with me. I have to find a solution.

When I can, I try to schedule a "catch up" day when I get home. That's what I'm doing today. Despite total exhaustion, I fell asleep at about 1:30am last night and woke up at 8:45am today. That's pretty normal, and even an earlier wake-up time than I expected. However, by 1:00pm I couldn't keep my eyes open again and I fell asleep on my couch for two more hours. It's almost 4:30 and I'm just starting to feel normal and focused and like maybe I can accomplish something today, although I'm not going to try anything more taxing than a blog post or some reading.

I'm curious to see what time I'll get tired tonight. I stopped taking the melatonin after my super-horrible sleep hangover day on the road because I'm afraid that it caused that awful morning. Getting fewer than four hours of sleep is one thing, feeling like I drank two bottles of tequila the night before is another. The only explanation I have is that it was the melatonin.

I'm debating whether or not to try it again, now that I'm home and have a relatively stable schedule for at least the next 10 days. I'm throwing some ideas around in my head...all I know is that something has to change. It just has to. I can't live like this or I will end up totally useless. I wonder how many homeless people have DSPS???

I Missed My Calling

I'm standing in the emergency room of a hospital surrounded by frantic people. There's a guy on a gurney in front of me, and he's a mess. Bloody, broken, unconscious. I realize that everyone is looking at me and finally a nurse standing to my right says, "Tell us what to do." I look down and I realize that I'm wearing a white coat. Panic rises in my gut and all I can think is, "Why do I have this coat on??? I'm not a doctor!" I'm frozen. The nurse looks up at me, pleading and yet incredibly calm and centered. "If you don't do something, he's going to die." Still, all I can think is, "I've been studying sociology for years! I don't know what to do!!! None of that education and experience is helping me here at all!!!"

Then suddenly, I snap into action. I start doing things and telling other people to do things. I don't know how I know what to do, but somehow it's just there and I do all the right things. As someone wheels the patient away, the nurse puts her hand on my right shoulder. She says, "He's going to be fine. You did it. I'll go tell his family that he's okay and that you'll be right out to talk to them."

My eyes snap open, my heart is pounding, and in a panic my first thought is, "I should have gone to medical school!!"

This is my longest-running Burgermare, recurring regularly for the past 8 or 9 years. It's always the same. If I met the nurse on the street, I would recognize her. She has short brown hair, is in her late 40s or early 50s, and is a little bit shorter than I am. Sometimes she's wearing glasses, sometimes not. Sometimes her scrubs are light green, other times they're light blue. But her words to me are always exactly the same. "Tell us what to do." "He's going to be fine. You did it."

Growing up, my adult role models were not physicians. They were police officers, mechanics, and stay-at-home moms. College wasn't even on my radar until I took a few classes at a community college more for fun than anything else. When the counselor saw my grades and SAT scores, he asked me why I was there instead of at a top university? I had no answer. I hadn't known that was an option for me.

So I went. Later, my professors guided me toward advanced degrees in sociology. I did well in the sciences, but my interest there leaned toward marine biology. I also considered marine bio for graduate school, but ultimately the bulk of my social support was in the field of sociology and so I ended up here.

A few years into grad school, I started working with a professor who specialized in doctor/patient communication. As a research assistant working on his studies, I spent a lot of time in doctors' offices - days, weeks, sometimes months collecting data in the same office. I began to think that I would have made a really good doctor. The more I saw the mundane reality of their working world, the more I was sure that it would have been an excellent choice for me. When I began to learn about eastern medicine, I knew that an integrated practice was my calling.

But I got sidetracked. By that time, I was so deep into a PhD program and so deep in student loan debt that making that leap was impossible. And there was another thing.

Sleep.

Medical school is notoriously a trial of sleep deprivation. I was terrifed that I wouldn't be able to do it. I didn't even know that DSPS as such existed yet, but I knew that I'd been trying to wake up early for my entire life - and I'd failed. Miserably. I'd struggled through the few required 8am classes in grad school, but we were on the quarter system and I always knew that it was only for 10 weeks, and only two days a week. I struggled through my own dissertation research, which involved meeting parole agents before dawn. I struggled through the work that I was doing to support myself, begging for afternoon meetings and shifts.

Could I have struggled through medical school? I don't know. I was afraid to try. The risk seemed too great, since I would be dealing with human lives.

Looking back, I think I could have done it. If I'd changed course the minute that I realized it was a better path for me, I could have made it work somehow. I still do a lot of medical sociology as part of my job, and I've seen doctors who wake up at the crack of dawn and work until 7 or 8pm. However, I've also seen doctors who start at noon, see patients in the evening, and work until after midnight. I'd like to think I could have been one of them. I'd like to think that if I had known them earlier in my life, I would have been able to make it through the Sleep Deprivation Marathon of medical school, knowing that it wouldn't last forever.

This week, a cardiologist told me that sleep deprivation is one of the risk factors he thinks other physicians miss. He believes that regardless of whether it's caused by apnea, insomnia, or a circadian rhythm disorder, it has serious consequences for our health that we don't take seriously enough. I yearned to be on his end of things, helping patients understand that sleep disorders are, in fact, to be taken seriously. From the end that I am on, I was surprised and thrilled that there are doctors out there who do take it very seriously, and who want to help change societal perceptions around sleep.

People still tell me that it's not too late to go to medical school. But it is. Unless I win the lottery, it's too late. I couldn't even really afford graduate school, so I definitely can't afford a second round, even if I could somehow struggle through the early mornings.

What I'm doing now isn't a bad career path either. It works for me, and I continue to learn a lot about the practice of medicine from a sociological standpoint. I'm coming to terms with the fact that DSPS is one of the major factors that shapes my path in life - and that despite my best efforts, it will continue to do so. It's a tough pill to swallow.

What's the Definition of Insanity?

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

I'm insane. I had such high hopes that a different dosage/timing of melatonin would finally work. I am so disappointed.

Yesterday, my hopes were sky high! I took the .3mg dose at 5:30pm and could barely keep my eyes open by 8:30pm. Now, I wasn't entirely thrilled with this development. I was a little annoyed. I had things to do and I was so tired that I couldn't do them. However, I was also more than a bit excited. I'm leaving for Chicago tomorrow and NYC in a couple of weeks, and I thought maybe this was a chance to get on a more easterly schedule to make those trips easier.

So I sucked it up and went to bed. I was fast asleep by 9:00pm. The last time that happened was when I was climbing mountains all day. So far, so good.

In the morning, I opened my eyes. It was light, and I could hear my neighbors starting their day. The woman behind me was setting her kettle on the stove and Superman was bouncing a ball above my head. But it's Saturday...these are the noises that I usually hear around 9:00am on a Saturday. It should be much earlier than that!

I turn my head toward the clock - it's 8:50am. Instead of advancing my sleep cycle, I simply slept for 12 hours. I'm so frustrated that I just want to cry.

I give up. I'm at a loss. I don't know what else to do. I really don't.