Circadian rythyms

In my younger days I could happily stay up until 1am and then bounce out of bed feeling completely normal only a few hours later. Things have changed, and not for the better. I find that I now need at least eight hours a night in order to wake up feeling normal. This has required going to bed at around 10pm. Raging gales aside, this gives me a solid 8-9 hours. The last few weeks have been rather busy, and rather than being all tucked up nice and early I find myself going to bed a little later than I would like. The trouble is that I appear to be pre-programmed to wake up at about 6am no matter what time I actually go to bed, and without that eight hour sleep I am absolutely shattered. I was hoping that I could force myself to cope with less sleep and that after a while I would get used to it. Nope.

Saturday night this week was a case in point. I couldn't sleep as I had an annoying cough. Instead I lay in bed watching Marvel's Agent's of Shield - pathetic but addictive american guff. Probably a mistake but there you go. Once I put that down I had a full hour of still not being able to sleep and the last time I looked at the clock it was about 1am. Excellent. At least it was the weekend. I awoke at 6am with five hours under my belt and feeling dreadul, snuck another hour in to see if that helped (not really) and finally dragged myself up and out onto the patch by about 8am thereby missing finding the year's first Wheatear. Sunday night was more or less a repeat, and so I started the week feeling less than tip top by some margin.

I am assuming it is an age-related thing. As I approach my 45th year on this planet, am I finally slowing down? Or is this a message to slow down? I mean, it's a bit early isn't it? Imagine when I'm 50. Or 60? Or even older! I'll be sleeping 18 hours a day, at which point, well, what's the point?

Anyway, I clearly need to get back to the 10pms, even if this means that I basically get in from work, grab a bite to eat, crack through the to-do list for an hour or so and then retire. There is just so little time, and I really need those extra hours to do all sorts of things that will otherwise not get done. Blogging is one of them - that was traditionally a late evening activity once all the important stuff like watering plants and organising holidays got done. Now that I think about it my increased sleep needs have probably contributed to my dearth of posts. Now if I didn't have to go to work it would be a whole different story, but sadly and in the absence of miracles that appears to be a very long way off!