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I’ve lived most of my life as a night owl. Lately, though, I can’t keep my eyes open past 11 p.m., and that’s on a good day. I’ve been heading to bed earlier and earlier and frankly, I’m terrified.
For most of my life, I’ve functioned on five to six hours of sleep. In high school, I played a lot of sports and video games, so at most, I got six hours during the week. College included many drunken nights that could be at best classified as drunk sleep for a few hours of shut eye. Up until recently, I’d be watching sports, reading shit online or out late grabbing drinks, but in the past few months, I’m down for the count by 10:30.
Maybe that’s what normal people do. Maybe my lifelong habits have caught up with me? This is terrifying, as my already sports injured body sounds like pop rocks walking up and down stairs and I need several beers and an ibuprofen or two after any athletic endeavor. Falling asleep on the couch, not being able to stay awake to catch up on TV shows or even stay out until the wee hours of the morning have taken a mental toll on me.
It saddens me knowing my once prided ability to run on a few hours of sleep is coming to an end. No matter how much I drank, how late I stayed up or whether I had to drive a friend to the airport, I would always be firing on all cylinders with any given amount of sleep. Hell, I never even had to drink coffee either. Just the high of life and personal conviction to be all I could no matter my amount of sleep.
Now I’m basically a shell of myself. Gone is the ability to run the gauntlet like I did in grad school, pound beers all night, show up hungover and give it 110%. If I get banged up the night before, I’m definitely mailing it in that day. I haven’t showed up hungover to work in ages, though. Maybe I’m out of practice and if you don’t use it, you lose it. I feel like Charles Barkley in Space Jam, and I’d honestly give anything to get it back.
While this sucks, it hasn’t been all bad. The extra sleep has been nice as I feel more well rested. I’m still firing on all cylinders and I’m unfortunately still a morning person. I probably appear to have my shit together, but in the end, it’s just a façade of my former self. What really sucks eggs is when we’re having a party or get together and I’m ready to head out way earlier than everyone else. I’ve tried the coffee route to stay awake, but coffee and beer are a dangerous and precarious mix, especially if you throw in some greasy food. I’m not saying that I spent an hour in the bathroom at a recent grill out, but children definitely heard me praying to any and all gods to make it stop and I’d be lying if that were the first time that has happened to me.
Getting old is weird. Saying you’re getting old when you’re 28 is also weird, as we’re not really that old. But I definitely feel it way more than I used to. I feel like I lost an integral part of myself and it ain’t coming back. I used to rock and roll all night and party every day. Then it was every other day… now I’m lucky to find half an hour a week in which to get wild. I’ve got to get out of this rut and back into the groove..
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Madoff
I specialize in damage control, being the drunkest at any and all functions and social assassination. Always appreciate a strong gif game. Follow me on Twitter. Sometimes I put up cool stuff about golfing at the local dirt tracks.
@BLMInvestment
Sincerely believing I now have Low-T.
In high school, I slept 3-4 hours a night most nights and always felt fine. College 5. Now I’m sleeping 6-8 per night and I’m always exhausted.
I had some friends over Saturday night. Even though I took a nap and had coffee at dinner, I still barely made it to midnight. Woke up at 7 am on Sunday feeling like crap. I’m 25 going on 70.
I don’t understand how you can be a night owl and a morning person. I’m definitely a night owl, and good God do I hate mornings.
From 14-23, I had to be as I worked at a CC and also played sports (hockey people will understand when cheapest ice time is before 6 am and after 7). No longer stay up as late due to no sports/parties/whatever later in the day.
At 23 I am currently like this. I really hate it, cause I can’t even try to stay awake out at bars on the weekends. My body just decides its sleep time for me.
This was me Saturday night, and then I just started drinking too much to try to wake up. It’s a lose-lose.
Red Bull Vodka’s used to get me going, but now it’s like an opposite effect and I just end up waking up on my gf’s bed and her pissed off at me with no memory of what happened.
In grade school and high school I always used to wonder why my parents and older siblings would nap during the day when I could survive on 4-5 hours of sleep. Now I completely understand.
I have insomnia and I seriously envy you
The same thing started happening to me in my late 20’s too. During the week I just embrace it. But it always makes pacific timezone (I’m on CST) games for my baseball and hockey teams a bitch. On weekends, 5 hour energy sure comes in handy.
Baseball playoffs have been the worst these past couple weeks just due to the time difference (also CST). The Cubs 13 inning game killed me the next morning. Can’t hang like I used to.
I go to bed at 9:30pm every night without fail. I don’t think I’ve been up past 11pm, even on a weekend, for about 2 years.
Being over 2,000 years old doesn’t sound all that bad.
Im jealous. I’ve always been a night person (looking the clock and seeing that its 11 pm and thinking that it’s still early) but now having to wakeup at 6 am every day is seriously killing me and i need to change my ways.