I have been unemployed for about 2 months now, and my schedule and habits have changed drastically. I used to work 7:00am – 3:30pm, which meant I woke up around 6:00am every morning and went to bed around 10:00pm. Now that I don’t have to wake up at any specific time, my body has reverted to its natural nocturnal state. I am writing this at 3:40am right now.
It amazes me how early the birds start chirping. I know there are nocturnal birds, but the daytime ones around here start singing at 2:00am, well before the sun comes up. There is one bird in particular who determines my sleep pattern to a large degree. It is the loudest, most obnoxious thing on the planet, and it sings right outside our bedroom window. I haven’t yet been able to identify it, but I think it’s a Capped Chickadee. If I don’t make sure I fall asleep before 2:00am, then I am doomed to stay awake for many more hours, until I am just too exhausted to keep my eyes open.
Sitting out on the front porch smoking, the entire street is quiet. Then I hear two cats screaming and fighting back in the alley. A neighbor’s dog starts barking because apparently its owners never bring it inside. Another dog answers, and the two converse loudly for a while. A police siren goes off down the road (though really, around here, that happens about every hour). A car parks in front of a neighbor’s house and starts HOOOONNNKKKKK-HONKHONK-HOOONNNKKKKK for 3 minutes.
I grew up on the edge of a historic suburban town and farmland, so when I first moved to the city all of the sounds took a lot of getting used to. Years later, I can easily tune most of the noise out. If I spend the night at my parents in the woods/suburbs however, my ears latch onto every single tiny noise and they keep me awake. For a year I moved back to the suburbs and I couldn’t sleep at all because any outside noise seemed so loud.
My cats seem to be extremely happy any night that I stay up really late. They run frantically all through the room, jump up in my lap, try to push my hands away from the keyboard, and play with each other. At first I was surprised at this until I realized that I’m an idiot and cats are nocturnal. As a side note, I have to mention that one of my cats is sleeping in a cat bed shaped like a cat with a little stuffed cat head on the front right now. It is the cutest and most disturbing thing ever.
I tend to forget to eat food during the day. I can go all through the day without eating anything, and then once it’s dark out I will binge on everything edible in front of me. Right now I have a half-eaten cake, box of Berger cookies, and a bag of pretzels sitting in front of me and oh god this is just so sad.
I keep telling myself that I’m going to force myself into a normal sleeping pattern again, so that I can function properly and not be a vampire. I have tried staying up all night so that I’m tired enough to fall asleep at 9:00pm the next night; I have tried doing hard exercise during the day so that I’m tired when BF goes to sleep; I have tried setting numerous alarms and having BF wake me up when he leaves for work in the morning. It worked for about one day in all of these two months.
The thing is, I fucking love to sleep. When left to my body’s own devices, I can sleep for 14 hours straight on a regular basis. I have always been like this. I also always have a hard time falling asleep, no matter how exhausted I am. I have taken medicine for this, I have tried not eating for 5 hours before bedtime, I have cut out caffeine, and nothing really seems to work. I’m a fucking cat. I just lay in bed and think about everything that happened during the day, all of the things I need to do, how am I going to get another job, I need to finish this one project, I should call back my aunt, BF is snoring now. Oh, when I’m excited about something (like the work week before Xmas, or the day of a job interview), I can jump out of bed immediately in the morning. But those things aren’t common occurrences.
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