I Promise I Really Did

I did actually write a post yesterday. In fact, I'd had it e-mailed to Blogger by 10 yesterday morning. The only problem is that I can't access Blogger at work to format and spruce up the pieces I e-mail, meaning I have to wait until I get home to fix up the formatting, insert any hyperlinks, and make it sound a little less crappy.

The only problem was that I was being responsible yesterday. After a brief break upon getting home and eating dinner, I set to my masters courses instead of getting onto my blog. By the time I'd shoveled through that lovely load of crap, it was 15 minutes after 8 p.m. and I knew I couldn't even see straight, much less muster up enough consciousness to rewrite a blog post that I had a sneaking suspicion wasn't as good as I had originally thought. By 8:45 p.m. I was in bed and by 8:46 p.m. I was unconscious.

This is not the first time I've crashed so soon this school year. It's at least the third time in the first two weeks and a day and it may be the fourth, actually. I just can't get enough sleep during the school year. Back when I worked later in the day (9-5 or 4-midnight) it was never an issue, but when I have to get up at 6 a.m. or earlier every day, it's seems inevitable that I'm going to go through the day dragging.

I even went to the doctor about this once. My chronic tiredness during the school year kind of plays into my frustrations with work, so I thought I'd go see if there was anything he could do about it. He just gave me a couple of different pills that ended up having me laughing maniacally at the television set (at a rugby match) because I couldn't focus on the screen enough to make anything out.

I didn't take those again that I'm aware of.

I was supposed to go back to the doctor and look into getting tested for sleep apnea or other sleep disorders if the drugs didn't work, but I went into a period where I wasn't feeling so miserable and I never got around to doing a follow-up appointment.

Honestly, I think I'm just what my freshmen psych professor referred to as a "long sleeper." She specialized in the psychology of sleep and mentioned in class that there are a minority of people who just need 9-10 hours (or more) of sleep per day without having any actual sleep disorders. That would possibly explain why I typically never have these issues in the summer. I go to bed around 11 p.m. on average and wake up around 9 a.m. and feel entirely rested.

Of course, I could just go to bed at 8 p.m. every night and then I'd have my ten hours of sleep when the alarm went off at 6 a.m., but it doesn't work that way. I can stay up later and get up later, but I can't get myself to go to sleep earlier than 9:30 unless I'm really tired. Like screaming profanities at the TV because the DVR recording of the water polo match got truncated by some glitch in the machine caused by Tropical Depression Fay (which is what led up to my early departure for bed one day last week). I'm not even that big of a fan of water polo (although it is on my list of best sports to be hopelessly poorly designed for television broadcast).

Until I can figure out a way to convince school systems to start their days and hour and a half later (studies do show that the natural cycle of adolescents starts and ends later than that of adults and that starting school so early may actually hinder academic progress for many), I'll have to deal with waking up dizzy, headachey and depressed five days a week after only getting eight hours of sleep a night until my exhaustion builds up to a high enough level to earn me an 8 p.m. bedtime and a day of feeling chipper and rested.