Good morning! It's 3pm

Hi.

To the chagrin of those who know me, I often am a mix of a vampire and a sleep-a-holic. Yes, you often find me up till early hours of the morning or sleeping in through most of the day. However, to my chagrin, their opinions are usually based on the few moments where my sleeping has prevented me from getting to a practice on time or missing a meeting entirely. To be honest, it doesn't happen like that most of the time.

So here's the deal. Moving from being a high-schooler to a college attendee means a shift in several things. No longer did I have the 6:30 wake up call from a parent in addition to my own alarm nor the required attendance to most of my classes (the am classes in particular). This facilitates a decline in the strict regimen I was required to maintain. On top of that there exists a sort of life style that is - not encouraged necessarily - but widely practiced: staying up late. While at home, I already had pushed my regular sleep time to midnight. As it was our family dinners took place around 9-10pm every night. Then pile on procrastination and getting caught up in chatting with friends till quite late. All that combined and you establish a late sleeping schedule. Now take the procrastination to the next level, add late night hang-outs and a virile night culture, and you get a much later sleep time. Now to recover from the lack of sleep that usually occurs during the week, of course you sleep in during the weekends: to store up on sleep for the upcoming week (catch up from the preceding week if you're desperate).

I'd often find myself unable to work in the late afternoon/early evenings, so I'd end up taking power naps. At first they started out as 20 minute snoozes they were supposed to be. Gradually they upgraded to 1-2 hour naps, and eventually I found myself taking 3-4 hour naps (over a span of 3 years). So anturally, when asked what I had done those evenings, I'd mention my naps along with any other news. And I become known for sleeping.

Now the real problem for me is waking up. If it's a short 20 minute nap I'll be up with a little shake or a phone alarm. But once it gets past and hour or two (depends on the level of exhaustion), much greater efforts must be taken. Usually, if I have an important task to accomplish, I feel that I can wake up. However, most often a series of 3 to 5 alarms, spread across half an hour are required to do the trick. On the other hand, no amount of physical shaking can get me to wake. According to my roommate (who has been given the task on many occasions) employing an annoying tactic such as tickling my nose will wake me from slumber. My theory on this, is that I am quite a deep sleeper once I fall asleep, as long as I am comfortable. It is rare that I find myself naturally brought out of sleep by my own internal clock.

So when I am referred to as a vampire for sleeping when everyone else is awake, I would agree with them. Yet, when I am accused of sleeping when I arrive late, or miss an event, it does bug me that I am blamed to have been sleeping. I have been the victim of a series of unfortunate events (not quite like those in the books... ^_^): phone battery dies, alarm is set for am instead of pm (or vice versa), electricity going out (alarm clock is plugged into the wall), phone on silent, among others. It is usually due to those events that I have been late or missed meetings. And these things happen pretty rarely, as I had mentioned before.

Ultimately, I enjoy sleeping. It is one of the things I do where I can forget about what I'm doing with my life or what I need to get done that week. It is a respite from the life that seems to move forward much faster than I wish it would. The feeling of being well-rested happens so infrequently these days that it really is a treasure.



And so the real purpose of this post, a song to gently wake you from your deep slumber and wish you a good morning, by an awesome fusion clarinetist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=od5gvwQRl-Y