You know that whole saying ... Master your habits or they will master you...
Well my sleep habits are kicking my ass!
I've been trying to develop a sleep routine - a "regular" sleep routine (something with 1 chunk of sleep during night hours) - for a while now, and I've been failing miserably.
Even on days like today. Yesterday I fell asleep during the evening, but then forced myself to go to sleep around midnight, and got 6 full, solid hours of sleep. Should be enough to make it through the day (I've made it on 3, and 4.5 hours a couple of times in the past few weeks). Yet I fell asleep around 630 this evening! I woke up around 8pm.
I try to find the cause every time, but it's not as easy as it seems...
Today:
I drank plenty of water throughout the day...
Ate a bowl of cereal in soy milk this morning,
had 2 bananas and maybe 10 oz of coffee to keep my brain moving quickly at school,
ate a couple of veggie burgers and some carrots when I came home
I'll admit, the one thing I lacked today was some kind of non incidental exercise (although it hasn't proven very potent in keeping me awake in the recent past)
And I fell asleep shortly after about an hour of playing my guitar.
THE SLEEP DEMON:
It's so frustrating how it happens. I'll be minding my own business, truckin along through my own day, and suddenly it will set in. When it hits, it's almost a sure thing that I'm soon going to crawl onto a soft surface and fall prey to its magic spell.
I have been able to push through it on occasion, emerging energetic and triumphant on the other side... ready for another 6 hours or so... But that is the exception - far from the rule...
I feel as if it requires a perfectly engineered day... one with strategically placed workout sessions and meals, the perfect environment, and an iron will... all in order to... ... ... not fall asleep before bedtime?!?!?!
I know all of you "sleep more" people are thinking "i told you so"... but my intuition still strongly disagrees. I may just be stubborn (quit nodding, I know) but I find it unreasonable that I can't even make it through a full day on 6 hours of sleep. I KNOW that I can do it... I've done it on less. And I honestly question whether bumping it up to 7.5 will really prove beneficial. Not to mention that it just feels like gutting my day to sleep from 10PM to 530AM.
So here I am... at the onset of yet another weekend... with the goals of fully catching up on all my schoolwork, putting in some really good hours of guitar practice, and hopefully (doubtfully... but hopefully) fixing my sleep pattern. And I reflect. Of course I have this sleep problem fixed in my head... but Apparently my own plans never work (or at least haven't been over the past... few weeks/months? I don't even know).
Regardless of what you think is "enough sleep"... the fact remains that most of my peers attending this community college thing work at least part time (I don't even have a job...) probably full time, and definitely sleep a lot less than me. It's really inexcusable for me to have trouble with this. And with the amount of time I've been battling, it's pushing "pathetic" that I seem to not be making any ground.
I dunno... Maybe I should do something extreme... get rid of the soft surfaces that provide a comfy landing or something...
Well, I suppose that's enough ranting for now. If you have constructive advice, feel free to throw it at me.
To all of you who have already provided great feedback: THANKS
great stuff so far. Feels like I've got the diet thing under wraps, maybe my next roadblock is just to routinize an exercise program.