Who needs sleep (well, you're never gonna get it)?

[aceofkittens]

I don't sleep all that much compared to a lot of people. I tend to go to bed late (by choice) and wake up early (by necessity). Eventually, I start to lag and I usually need a good "sleep-in" to recharge my batteries and then I am right back in the sleepless saddle... whee! :)

But once I do go to sleep, I am a solid sleeper. I rarely get up for any reason during the night and I'm not all that easy to wake up in the morning. Sometimes, I say funny/crazy shit when people try to wake me up. Also, I'm able to sleep just about anywhere. I've snoozed at a Metallica concert, at a pool hall, and at a club in Vegas. But I know everyone's different and I'm bored and curious, so... I present...




[Poll #677184]






And now... off to screw around online for another 5 or 6 hours before bedtime. ;)

Comments

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

My nights are wildly variable.

A good night is midnight to 6:30, woken by the alarm, then promptly back to sleep until noon. (ME/CFIDS=massively increased need for sleep)

A bad night is unable to sleep until after 2AM(by which point I usually have to take something) and/or disturbances before noon(usually the bloody telephone. I don't answer, but I do hear it). ME/CFIDS causes delayed sleep, difficulty initiating and maintaining sleep, and unrefreshing sleep.

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

{hugs} I hope all nights will be good nights.

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but hugs are not required. ;)

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

When I said "hug," I of course meant "a terrific pinch on the arse," but I briefly forgot what I really meant, and said "hug" by accident. It shan't happen again! :) :) :)

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

Oooh errr!
Now you're talking. ;)

Icon love

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

Little My!!!

[darthmollusc.livejournal.com]

I'm generally a pretty good sleeper. I fall asleep quickly and usually sleep through the night. But this assumes that I only turn in when I'm damn good and ready to go to sleep. If I turn in early it is counterproductive as I get fidgety and won't get to sleep. I probably get between 5 and 6 hours a night. I need to be careful... if I fall too far behind on my sleep I get anxious and irritable which then starts to undemine my ability to fall asleep.

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

I get about 5 hours, maybe 6, on most weeknights. I tend to start to get growly after a week or two of this with no respite. But, what can I say, I burn that candle at both ends.

[pokiedot.livejournal.com]

i think my sleep is very tied into my cycle. i'm beginning to notice that all my insomnia happens around the same time every month. so for about a week and a half each month, i wake up and stay up at like 5 am.

tonight i take a lunesta.

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

Lunesta... I always do a voiceover to those commercials: "Why am I being stalked by a giant moth?" or else "Help, help, there's a huge butterfly landing on my head!" :)

[seismic.livejournal.com]

I've been doing the "wake up hours before the alarm clock" thing lately. Or, in the case of weekends, waking up too damned early even though the alarm clock isn't set. Sunday, I was up at 6:30. Yeesh.

I'm trying to be thankful that it's (a) the productive kind of insomnia and (b) that it hasn't morphed into shaving time off both ends of the sleep cycle... yet. That's walking death.

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I've had that experience also, that anxious, jittery state. I don't enjoy it, but I would be doing better right now if I were able to get up when the alarms do ring. :(

[cohen7.livejournal.com]

people who sleep too much die earlier. insomnia all the way!

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

Yes! Listening to Canadian music! :)

[jvmatucha.livejournal.com]

I get up 3 times on average. I am not a very good sleeper. If they had an Olympic sleeping team, I would not be on it!

Sometimes my restlessness is so bad I'll start working on some web project in the middle of the night, or gather replies from you and jaddziadax, our fellow LJ vampire!

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

See, I totally would win a silver in the Sleep Olympics. I would lose marks from the Russian judge for taking too long to actually go to sleep. Once I'm asleep, it takes a cannon firing to wake me up. You should see the snooze-flailing which occurs every morning. I'm able to hit the snooze button for hours without actually waking up.

[inoah.livejournal.com]

Maybe you need one of these.

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

Wow, if this Clocky thing were commercially available, I'd so buy one... or two.

[ex-chose.livejournal.com]

I wake up in the middle of the night to "check on things" because of my OCD. my husband has a totally different schedule, so when he comes to bed, the door wakes me up and gets me started.
bah.
how many hours a night do you get? you must be exhausted.

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

What a creepy icon! Perffect for the topic!

I generally get about 5 hours a night at most. I find that I do ok with that, bolstered by caffeinated beverages. I can keep going in this manner for quite some time, though yeah, I'm pretty tired and cranky. :) This past weekend, I recharged the sleep batteries, though, so I'm ready to go! :)

[inoah.livejournal.com]

I've had chronic sleep problems for decades now. I can never fully predict when I'll fall asleep/wake up. The slightest noise tends to wake me up, though earplugs help with that. Lately, I can't sleep more than 6 hours at a time, which is up from the 4 hours at a time of a couple of weeks ago. I fell asleep at 21:30 last night and now I'm fully wide awake--at 3am. That's sure useful. I'd be sleepy again by the time I have to go to work, but I already planned to take the day off.

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

Do you find that once you are awake you can't get back to sleep? Sorry to hear you have troubles with sleeping. :(

[inoah.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I often can't get back to sleep for quite a while. After I've been laying awake for an hour I usually just give up and putter around on the computer or something. (e.g. went to bed last night at 23:10, woke up at 3:30)

I forgot to mention that in the last year or two I've started talking (or yelling) in my sleep, and that usually wakes me up too. Varies from once every couple of weeks to 2-3 times a week. Once, I woke myself up while making a pun out loud (I wish I could remember what it was now). Serves me right.

Oh, and I ended up going to work yesterday anyway and postponing my day off. I wasn't the least bit sleepy, which is a little unusual lately.

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

I wish you remembered that pun too!

Some of the things I've said while half-asleep were pretty funny. Well, funny to me! :)

[bluesilverkdg.livejournal.com]

My sleep disorder causes me to get up (sleepwalking, while dreaming, an offshoot of REM Sleep Behavior) an average of at least 5-8 times on average. I don't keep count, but I'd imagine sometimes it's as many as 12 times or more. I stay in REM sleep the majority of the night, sometimes (OK, most times) never getting out of it. The sedative that I talk about so much helps a bit, but makes me woozy and non-functional the next day, usually.

When I went to the sleep clinic, I was also told that I had a "slight" case of apnea, although I don't stop breathing long enough for it to be a concern. He told me I woke up 56 times in six hours. I also have an odd form of narcolepsy, which would take a whole 'nother page to describe. And I've got Restless Leg Syndrome, which was KILLING me last night. I think I finally got to sleep around 3:30-4 am. It's now just after 7, and this is the fourth time I've actually gotten up (other than sleepwalking) and I must stay up this time.

If I can sleep through the day, I do it, and my sleep is SO much better in the daytime. Alas, that's usually not possible. :-(

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

{hugs} Does it help to take a small (cat)nap early in the evening?

[nowafulldeck.livejournal.com]

Like bluesilverdk, I have subclinical apnea which wakes me anywhere from 50 to a couple of hundred times a night. I usually sleep like a log for about three hours at the beginning of the night and then start waking. If I get up and work for an hour (often just reading email or a book, but best if I'm writing something), I can sometimes break up the night enough to sleep a bit better. If I don't get up (beyond just to pee), I toss and turn all night. I miss being twenty, when I slept like a log all night.

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

Meh... that sounds really unpleasant. Does it make a difference what time you go to bed? Does it help to take naps during the day?

[nowafulldeck.livejournal.com]

I'm used to it really. So I don't get all anxious thinking about it. I'm thinking now that I probably don't _need_ as much sleep as I used to. But now and again a little nap in the afternoon is really good. And I can fall asleep anywhere: dentist's chair, meetings, waiting for a clerk to find my shoe size... It's not narcolepsy, but it doesn't take much physical relaxation sometimes for my body to shut down.

[trollpete.livejournal.com]

My wife tells me I have apnia, but if I do, i don't know it. :p She sometimes hit me if my non-breathing wakes her up, but eventually I'll just snort and all will be good. I tend to sleep (or not) like you do -- I'm a night owl, and I hate to go to bed. I hate to get up too, but such is the life.

When I was a kid, I was a hypersleepwalker and nightmare maniac.

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's my problem: I hate to go to bed. It's a lot easier for me to stay up all night than get up in the morning. :(

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Chip is really my most effective alarm clock. "Get up! Feed me! FEED ME! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, WHY AREN'T YOU GETTING UP TO FEED ME?!!!!" :)

Sometimes I frighten myself with this ability to sleep anywhere at any time. That time at the nightclub in Vegas, I peacefully laid my head down onto a table with a lit candle and my hair almost caught on fire. :)

[scanner-darkly.livejournal.com]

"Cat walking on my face" -- especially if it's this cat...

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

Cats are trying to mind control us, as you know — the reason they sit on our heads at night is to try and get closer to our spicy brains. This is true!

[aerinys.livejournal.com]

I'm generally out like a log, but do occasionally have to get up to visit the bathroom. However, I'd say my asthma wakes me up a few times a week, which is why I generally remember to have my inhaler right next to the bed. As for when I'm *supposed* to get up? Hah! It's a struggle! For instance, alarm was set for 7:20am this morning...I hit snooze until 8:15. It's automatic for me. Luckily, I'm not too far from work...at least for another month.

It doesn't help that the cat walking on my face is what's causing the asthma! *sigh* Oh well. I can't give him up. :)

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

I know, I can't seem to get up in the mornings to go to work, despite my complicated 5-alarm wake-up system. However, I have no trouble getting up at the crack of dawn to, say, get on a flight to SF. I don't know why that is... ;)

[saladbar.livejournal.com]

I used to sleep like a log. Not anymore though. :(

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

Now you have a guilty conscience, which does not allow you to sleep through the night. Yeah, I know how it is!!!