Internal clock

Dragging one’s ass out of bed in the morning is a challenge for many people, because who gets enough sleep with everything we want to get done during waking hours? The daily routine of repeatedly hitting the snooze button and groping for coffee is a basis for a lot of humor in our culture, because who can’t relate to that?

Except those who don’t. There’s a reasonable number of people who wake up automatically, shortly before the alarm would have gone off – if they had even bothered to set one. Those lucky dogs, right? Or maybe not always. Those lucky dogs are probably the ones that rarely go out at night because they’re going to snore through the concert, or stand like zombies at the party when everyone else is just getting going.

A week and a half ago we had a time change. Much of the population rejoiced, “An extra hour of sleep!” Yeah. Maybe. For some people. For one day. Whoo-hoo.

But think for a moment about the impact on the “I don’t need an alarm” segment of the population. The fall time change is brutal! It’s been a week and a half, and they are all still waking up the same time as ever. Except now it’s an hour too early. That’s an hour of lost sleep every night – for weeks!

I will probably not manage to reset my clock until Thanksgiving or Christmas break, when I can sleep in far enough, for enough consecutive days, to manage to completely override my internal clock. But for now – I get done coaching at 8:00 or 8:30 and I’m going straight to bed. Don’t bother trying to call me. Call me in the morning. Anytime after about 4:40 AM.