[legion]

The winter is the worst. Dark when I get up, dark when I get home--and I only live 1.5 miles from work.

I get up at 6:00 a.m.. (Begin movement might be a more accurate term, as my brain is not up and running yet.) It's not uncommon for me to dose off several times while getting ready in the morning. In the shower...when putting on socks...pretty much any time I'm sitting or leaning.

I get to work and I don't speak to anyone for at least the first hour. Everyone knows better than to try to speak to me. I buy a single Lipton Iced Tea somewhere between 7:00 and 8:00 and that is my only caffeine for the day.

I hit my stride somewhere in the late morning and this continues through the day (even after lunch, assuming I don't have a carb-laden lunch).

When bed time comes, I'm not ready to sleep. I'm a night owl. I go to bed and flip on the TV to drain my brain. I've learned if I don't have the TV on to distract my thoughts, I lay awake in bed with my eyes wide open. I think about things I need to do...right now! When I lived by myself, it wasn't uncommon for me to get out of bed 3-4 times to complete small tasks that I deemed necessary before morning. I can't sleep in a quiet, dark room--there's nothing to distract my thoughts. I don't have an alarm clock on my side of the bed anymore--I used to just watch the minutes tick by and I'd think to myself: "I'm only going to get six hours of sleep...I'm only going to get five hours of sleep..."

I fall asleep some time between 11:00 (on a good night) and 12:00. Sometimes (becoming rarer and rarer) as late as 1:00 or 2:00.

And then I wake up dead tired the next morning and the cycle repeats...

On weekends (when I don't have anything going on), I tend to fall asleep around midnight, and I might sleep until 9:00 or even as late as 11:00.

Sometimes I hit patches for a few months (usually after vacations or after time-changes--to or from daylight savings) where I fall asleep earlier and actually wake up and can hit the ground running in the morning. I actually made it all the way through the summer and into October this year before reverting to dead-tired-in-the-morning mode. I think riding my motorcycle in in October helped motivate me to wake up in the morning.

Anyone else hate mornings?