Any night people out there

Hooot Onnnnnn Mel ! I remember those all nighters before exams too !...no more though ....David

Mel, I've always been an early riser....but I spent a number of years working rotating shifts to support 24 hour operations. I've been there...and gladly back to knowing that staying up all night is not my preferred mode.

I've lays gone to bed round 11:30, woke at around 6-7am. But in the last year, as I've started to slow down my workload, I've been staying up till 12:30-1:30 am, sleeping till bout 8:30. Get into work at 10 ish. Unless I have a specific reason to be in early.
If I get 6 -6 1/2 hours sleep. Night I'm ok. 7 or more I'm great. If I get less than 6, I'm a waste case.

I'm a night-person by nature. I never did all-nighters for the sake of exams in college. Though I remember once being summoned to his office by a professor because I looked like hell and hadn't shaved for days. He said it isn't worth it doing all-nighters. I told him I'm not doing all nighters, I have the flu and had a temperature of 104 the last I'd checked.

But in the last decade of my working life before I retired I often had to do all-nighters to link up on the phone with someone elsewhere in the world or to see a bid through to delivery and get a signature on the opposite side of the planet before a drop-dead deadline.

I once knew a cop who said anyone you see out at 2 a.m. is up to no good. But I'm a night person and proud of it. The hours between 10 p.m. or so and 4 a.m. are the best hours of the day. I'm an introvert by nature--not that I can't stand in front of a room and declaim when I need to -- but sitting on the front porch at 2 a.m. watching the lightning, or lying in bed reading a book, or sitting in my study playing a guitar, or mandolin, or ukulele is the best that can be--at least on this planet.

I worked an odd shift for a while in the Navy - 12 hours on and 24 off. That was a strange schedule but I quickly adapted. The shifts when I got off at midnight, I'd go to the day-room and read until dawn. The other shift when I'd get off at noon I'd crash immediately, get up for a few hours, find some chow, then crash again until my next 12 hour shift started. Oddly enough it still worked out pretty much to sleeping about 8 hours out of 24, but on a 72 hour cycle--one half of which had more sleeping and working and the other half had more reading and working.

We later changed to 8 hours on 16 off but then switching shifts every week (8 on, 8 off, 8 on, 16 off
to swap shifts). The weekly re-adjustment really sucked. I'd take the 12-on, 24-off 72 hour cycle any day over that-if only because it gave me midnight to dawn to sit and read a couple of times per week.

Jim

Since I retired from law enforcement I'm all over the place. Lots of crazy schedules back in the day. One was a reporting time of 0430 and my commute was about 50 minutes. UGH!.

Now, sometimes in bed by 11, other times not--a big NOT being this weekend when I was up way too late, went out for one final armful of firewood, and promptly face planted in my front yard!

Well, a trip to the ER Sunday morning, and it looks like I'll live!

MEN!!!!!

I'm in bed by 9 and up at 3am everyday...

My best friend thinks I'm nuts and wants to know what I do at 3...Told him the same thing he dies at 1am before he goes to bed ;-)

Can you hear me now...?

(Curious, there seem to be three threads by Mel on this going on, each started at different times, but this one seems to be the latest).

Definitely a night owl here. Been that way since childhood, through all the school years and on into college, during adulthood, and still am.

I was most certainly a night owl in college, and pulling all-nighters was easy indeed for me. When selecting courses for the next semester, I always tried to avoid those 8AM classes (and even morning classes in general, though not always successful in doing that), and three-hour evening block courses, hated by so many students, were always fine with me, simply because they were at night, and I felt more alert.

(Incidentally, the library where I worked for so many years, the University of Florida, a few years ago instituted a policy of remaining open 24 hours a day during finals week at the end of semesters. A final, and some would say long overdue, recognition of the fact that so many students are indeed night people).

Being a night creature also proved to have one other big advantage for me as a college student. During my sophomore year I took a course in introductory astronomy which ignited in me a lifelong passion for amateur astronomy. I became so fascinated with it that I got my own 6-inch reflector telescope, and during the following summer, which I had taken off from school, I pulled some literal all-nighters out in the back yard stargazing. Being a night person certainly made that much easier to do.

But the most significant way that being a night owl impacted my life, and in fact it might have literally saved my life, was during my year in the war in Vietnam. As one of the officers (First Lieutenant) in my battalion, I had rotating assignment as Night Duty Officer, maybe once every week or so. That meant I was up all night and essentially "in charge," especially as acting Base Camp Defense Officer for my battalion and its section of the basecamp defense perimeter. Since Charlie (the slang we used for the Viet Cong) did most of his attacks on us at night (mortar assaults, nighttime sniping, and such), it was imperative for me to be as alert as possible all night long, especially for making the call as to when to wake up the Battalion Commander (the Lieutenant Colonel) if the situation called for it. Conversely, I realized what a stressful situation it was for the soldiers out on the perimeter who were by nature morning people, having to try to stay awake and be alert at 2AM, 3 AM, and all night long for that matter, when their bodies were telling them to go to sleep. So as I said, the ability to be as alert as possible under those circumstances, being awake enough and sharp enough to notice any signs of danger, especially when we were out in the dark on the bunker line, might have just saved our lives.

Having had that kind of experience gave me great respect for all those people out there who stay up all night and need to be alert at their jobs, such as police officers, night delivery people, electrical grid people, you name it. And that especially includes the ER people in our hospitals who routinely get all sorts of cases at all hours of the night.

sometimes I stay up very late.

Just last night I didn't go to bed until nearly 10:00 pm.

Andrew

Michael:

Keep in mind that although I am by nature a night owl, for most of my life I kept "normal" hours.

So, when working, I would get up say at 6:10 AM or so. I would brush my teeth, shave, shower. I would then have breakfast, always finishing by 7:20 and then off for work.

But, now in retirement, I get up at say 9:00 -9:30 AM. But I then get on the computer and spend 2 hours on that. I am an avid investor and manage my own portfolios. That's what I do each morning. I THEN have breakfast, often when you morning folks are finishing lunch. After that I'll have dinner -- when we get hungry. That's usually about 7:00 PM. Crazy, huh. I do snack a bit too.

I do need to get back on a more regular schedule. In fact, I am having some constipation problems. Not having a regular schedule means I'm not! Once we do our snowbird thing, we will be back on a regular schedule.

Mel

Michael:

I am that active, but I know last year I cut back. I will do it this year too.

Mel

My wife worked 3 - 11:30 PM at a hospital for 30 years. I worked days. So I got up at 6 - 6:30. Taught school all day then waited till the wife got home from work. never got to bed until 1 or 2. Since she retired she is still on the same schedule. Gets up late and stays up late. I still work part time in the morning and stay up late every night. The worst part is she always wants to start a new project around the house at 6 or 7 at night. So I am a night owl. Average night's sleep is 4 to 5 hours.