I’m a night person learning to be a morning person, but it still gets dark too damn early. Why do we night people have to surrender our hour of evening daylight to you morning people? Why? Can’t you get dressed in the dark?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I hate the Spring Forward/Fall Back disruption of my body rhythm. It’s a plot, I tell ya, to throw the whole population into a confused state like jet lag twice a year!
I tell you, morning people have it so good. We have the world to ourselves, and it’s lovely, not crowded, gorgeous. I would never trade it for nights again. Not on a regular basis!
The World is quiet at 5 a.m.
Amen.
So, a night person is complaining about it getting dark too early…
:::shaking my head:::
For me – someone who was never a “night person” until medications I have to take turned my mornings ugly – and from what I’ve gleaned talking with other nighties, it’s not about liking the dark. It’s about not being in a comfortable physical rhythm until you’ve been up several hours, as opposed to people who wake up and feel great right away. Some folks are wired more one way, some the other.
I’ve been both. I miss mornings, for all the reasons Lisa mentions, but it’s not a choice thing. Before about noon I just feel like crap, regardless of when I go to bed. And I hate going to bed when I do, because physically speaking, they’re my best hours of the day (and I know I’ll feel like crap again when I wake up).
The point being, why should we lose an hour of daylight to suit the needs of an agrarian society that mostly no longer exists? I’m with Boo on this one.
I guess it is a bit of an internal wiring thing…my oldest son has always gotten up wide awake and ready to go… middle son, not so much. But neither of them has ever really been an ‘up all night, sleep all morning’ kind of guy (at least not until teenagerhood hit them).
Apparently there’s new science that shows there really is a physiological/developmental basis to teenagers being late sleepers. It’s been cited in educational debates over the wisdom of making high school students learn at 7:30 AM when they’re not worth a damn.
I’m quite aware of those studies. Being the parent of teens drives the point of those studies home. Unfortunately we’re wed to an educational paradigm that’s about training the young ones to be good little cogs in the machine rather than to (heaven forbid) learn to think critically. Just speaking for myself.
In fairness, people need to be able to see their children off to school or even drive them there before they go to work. It isn’t easy to change the early start of the school day. They might start off with gym though, instead of math. But even there, you can’t have the whole school in gym at the same time.
No doubt there are some logistical issues, with no easy solutions.
I will say that I would have probably done better with gym early on rather than math or Spanish. If nothing else, the exercise would have awakened me by the next period. So it goes.
This is so true. I am a morning person who wakes up and gets going. I don’t hit Snooze and I don’t lie there. My husband is a night person who stays up late and sleeps in. I!m surprised we have had a good marriage all these years. š
I have three sons and out of those three, there is one morning person and two night people. My middle son, who is serving with Americorps may have had his internal clock skewed over the last seven months, however. They rise and shine early, work in a very physical job, and fall into bed exhausted. We’ll see what happens when he is out of that environment.
Yeah, I love sunlight. I just am not worth a damn until eleven in the morning. And I can do my best writing after midnight, if given the chance. What I hate is it being dark before 9pm.
Same here, on all counts!
Yeah, me too. Going back to self-employment Jan. 1 where I can make my own schedule & work in my sweats if I want. Afternoon naps will be a priority.
I never got the farm thing, having two dairy farmers in the family, and one wheat farmer. In winter, the dairy farmers are milking in the dark morning and night – and you sure don’t change the milking time to suit the clock. And the wheat farmer wasn’t especially busy in the winter – lots of equipment mending and so on. So they didn’t care.
I was a school kid during the oil shock in the 70s and I do remember all the fuss about danger to kids walking to school in the dark, and increase in accidents. But again, I thought it made more sense to change school hours than to change the entire country’s hours. I don’t get it.
The first thing we agree on! (Unless you agree that the Falcons are the best team in the NFL).
Although a Daylight-Savings induced 9 a.m. sunrise would be tough.
I played music in various bands for many years, and so my biological clock got set on the late shift. But this winter I’ve resolved to get up no later than 8:00 a.m. Otherwise, the days are so short it’s like living in Greenland or someplace.
By the time I get up,
Teri has walked the dog, cleaned our whole street of litter, gotten the multiple gardens watered, the laundry in the machine, the coffee on, & ready for whatever chores she`s chosen for that day.
The last day`s food scraps have been thrown to the animals in the canyon.
The food bowls for the parrots have been filled & set in their respective spots in the aviary.
Then she wakes me, & I complain about it because I was in such a deep sleep.
She goes to sleep at dark & wakes at dawn.
I fall asleep at 3:00 AM & wake up when she pulls my big toe.
At least there`s coffee & cinnamon toast.
No complaints here.
Not to worry — it’ll be Solstice before we know it.
There was an important study at Berkeley that made the case for this. They proved that attempting to put one’s pants on in the dark just after waking up could be disorienting and dangerous. One could put both legs in the same pant leg, fall down and become seriously injured. Other scenarios were equally horrific.
Meanwhile, taking pants off in the dark at night is easy and gravity can be a helpful assistant.
This was a $10 million grant from the US NSI and ATO and the testing employed a robust methodology and large populations of lab mice.
At least that’s the way I recall it. I’m a little tired right now cause I’m not the night person I used to be…
lab mice were taking off their pants in the dark? sounds like an interesting study, must have taken years to train the mice
Actually most of the time was taken up by sewing those tiny little pants.
this is getting close to the time where I just get the creeps everyday. I’ll be getting dressed in the dark, and it’s dark by the time I get off of work at 5. I don’t usually go out for lunch, so it’s all darkness for me for about a month.
Mornings are nice but damn it’s dark at 4:30 over here. That’s way too early! Coming home in the dark sucks. New England has some draw backs from a time-zone perspective I feel.