Weekend Assignment #199: When do you sleep?

I left the link to the assignment off the original post – sorry Karen.

When I was in high school, my motto was “No sleep ’til Brooklyn!” I lived in Brooklyn, though, so that was alright. It’s not like I never slept.

Short answer: my sleep schedule is unhealthy and likely to lead to heart disease and unsightly wrinkles.

This winter, I’m getting up around 6:45 am on weekdays in winter when I don’t run before work (most days, since it’s cold and dark in the morning and I’m a wuss). It’s when I go to bed that’s a problem. I had gotten to the point by December where I came home, helped put the kids to bed, then logged back into the office and worked until midnight almost every night. I was able to put the brakes on that, but now I have the novel to work on, not to mention the blog, so I’m staying up even later. At least I have some work/life balance. When I have some discipline about going to bed, I’m running on about six to six and a half hours of sleep a night during the week, which is just under what I need in order to function normally; when I let things go, it’s more like five.

Extra credit: If we had no other obligations, it is entirely possible that Mrs. Unfocused and I would go back to the sleep schedule we had the summer after we graduated from college, when we were unemployed, living on credit from Harper Foods, and spending our days swimming in Lake Michigan at The Point. That summer we went to bed at 4:00am and slept until noon.