Summer Sleep Cycles

As the summer draws to an end, one thing becomes painfully clear:

I am in no way ready to be waking up at 7 AM (sometimes 6:30) to go to school.

This thought has been occurring to me for a few weeks, but it struck quite painfully last night at 6:40 AM when I was sitting on my floor, staring out my window and waiting to watch the sunrise. I'd finally pulled myself away from video games at 4:30, and away from the computer at around 5:30 - I crawled back out of bed at 6 when I decided that no sleep was going to be happening.

So as I stared at the sky, it came to me that maybe going to bed at 6 AM and waking up at 4 PM is not the healthiest sleep cycle to adopt a week before school starts again.

I mean, sure, for half of the summer I was doing fine. I still had school (technically), so I was going to bed and waking up at perfectly normal hours (for me, that is; I can usually work on less sleep than the general populace). But that was in a time zone five hours ahead of what I live in. I got back and hey, I was waking up at 10 AM! It was mostly because of jet lag, but I had a nice cycle going on for a while there. However, good sleeping habits never last long with me.

It wasn't long before I started falling into the usual routine of waking up in the afternoon and going to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. And before long, I'll be a part of the sleep-deprived teenage masses, shuffling into the classrooms like zombies because as soon as summer hits, all reason is thrown out the window and we decide that it's better to be awake at night rather than during the day.

This morning, while I was sitting, I thought a lot. It was nice to take some time to think, especially when the world is still quiet and there aren't the usual distractions. I didn't see the sunrise; while my window faces east, it was cloudy and my house is surrounded by trees. This was a little disappointing, but I wasn't staying up any later to see if it would happen eventually.

In any case, let's hope I don't stay up that late (or early, however you look at it) again!