2 posts tagged “graveyard”
I let my cycle drift. This is easy to do, since I suffer from (self-diagnosed, hey it's the Internet!) Non 24-hour Sleep-Wake Syndrome. That's that nasty condition where you end up staying up progressively later every night you get the chance. Really wreaks havoc on a workweek, lemme tell you. As of right now, I'm 8 hours late. I should be waking up at 5 PM and instead I'm waking up at 1 AM.
I'm doing a reset. Two nights in a row I'm staying up 24 hours instead of my usual 16, so I can quickly bump my schedule two 8-hour notches ahead and end up where it's supposed to be: asleep at 9 AM and awake at 5 PM. This morning I woke up at 1 AM so I'm staying up until... 1 AM. I should then crash out and sleep until about 9 AM, at which point I'll stay up another 24 hours until... 9 AM. When I go to sleep, I'll be nice and rested and it'll be a lovely 5 PM, just in time to get my day started and eventually roll into work at midnight in time to keep the bloggers bloggin' for 8 hours.
Sleep deprivation is nature's
ambien. Drugs have always done a poor job of getting me to sleep
reliably, but nothing works quite like forcing yourself to go without
sleep for an extra couple hours. I never have trouble crashing out if
I've been up for 24 hours and my eyelids are sagging down to my chest.
Needless to say, it's the staying up that's the trip. I have some
cheap solutions to keep me awake, like Sudafed, but it makes me feel so
unbelievably janky I refuse to do it. All I've got is caffeine. Lots
of it. I'm sure my heart will thank me.
I wear earplugs when I go to sleep thanks to my upstairs neighbors' love of daytime reality television and their several loud yappy dogs. Also the fact that between 9 AM and 5 PM, most people are naturally awake and making noise. I've been using these cheapo ones from Walgreens which do a good job of keeping out the noise but just fucking HURT. I guess they really do hurt; I was cleaning out my ear and pulled out a nice little scab encrusted with earwax. I dabbed at my ear with a piece of tissue paper and pulled up some tiny red spots. Gross. So I'm cutting and scarring up my ears every time I go to sleep. Yet another nasty side effect of working the graveyard. If anyone has recommendations for some better earplugs that don't tear up your ear, please let me know. I'd like to replace these crappy ones post-haste and do my poor ears a favor.
