June Renew: Day Six
Alarming Realization
I’m not really sure what’s going on with me lately. For the past several months, I’ve been having to peel myself out of bed in the morning. My alarm is set for 2:25AM, but I never wake up with it. Immediately my hand flies to the snooze, giving me nine minutes of peace before it goes off again, followed by the next alarm at 2:35AM. And when that one gets snoozed too, I have the 2:45AM alarm to back me up.
Only I’m not waking up at these times. I snooze and snooze and actually get out of bed anywhere between 3:05AM and 3:11AM. It’s not good. I rush to get ready for work, grumble at the cat who just wants to eat, and rocket myself out the door to catch my Uber. It’s not a very sound system. Why, just this morning I accidentally turned off all my alarms, only waking up at 3:24AM because my body is so used to these insane hours. I made it to work on time, but only just barely. And it still took me hours to finally wake up and realize exactly where I was.
I can’t keep risking this unstable sleep cycle, or else one of these days I’ll snooze myself into a state of perma-grogginess.
Nap-a-holic
I’ve made mention of my grandma hours before. The overnight shift can do that to a person. So generally I take a one to one-and-a-half hour nap each day after work. Just a brief period of closing my eyes, sometimes even when I don’t mean to. I just can’t stay awake during the day anymore. I sit on the couch, twiddle on Twitter, watch YouTube, and conk out for a bit. You’d think getting all this extra sleep would make for an easy wake up call. But it doesn’t. I wonder if it’s making it worse. And heaven forbid I don’t get that midday siesta, because I end up sleeping like a rock, where not even the loudest alarm could wake me up.
But why? What’s going on that’s keeping me glued to the sheets? Is this just how it is right now? Should I never expect to wake up on a proper time frame ever again? Why does my mind keep telling me I can afford to just stay asleep in times where it’s so salient to stay awake?
Rise and Shine
Each night before I go to sleep, I tell my friend I’m going to wake up with my alarm this time. I’m actually going to do it and not succumb to the slumber that keeps swallowing me whole. And yet I just keep on snoozing. I’d rather lie down and finish my dreams rather than properly prepare for a packed workday, where all I seem to do is yawn and groan and shirk and grumble. It’s tiresome, literally, and right now I don’t even have pot to blame for all this lethargy.
Weekends seem to be the only sense of normalcy I have, especially now that I’ve been encouraged to stop being lazy and actually pull my Murphy bed down at night, instead of just passing out on the couch. It’s the few days I don’t have to overthink my nighttime routine or anything I need to do upon waking. Perhaps that’s the key here: I’m simply overthinking it. I’m just too caught up in what I should be doing that I’m creating needless sleep drama for myself. Maybe mentally treating my workdays like weekends can do me some good once my head finally hits that pillow.
I need not be upset with myself that I’m not an early riser. But I can put to rest the notion that I’m powerless to overcome the need for those five minutes of extra sleep upon waking. This news cycle is exhausting enough without my drowsiness compounding things.
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