I'm very much a Night Owl.

As far back as I can remember, I have always struggled with getting up in the mornings and I was always late for school and for the various days jobs I've had. These days, being self-employed and only working in the evenings, I constantly have to fight to stop my sleeping cycle from slipping out of sync with the rest of the world and ending up sleeping all day and being up all night. It really does seem that my natural tendency is to get up at about 4pm and go to sleep at around 8am. I've always been like that though; my folks used to refer to me as a vampire when I lived at home with them.


Incidentally, I read an interesting article a few years back that said that anthropologists felt that there was a biological or evolutionary reason why some of us are morning larks and some of us are night owls. Apparently, on the African plains where we evolved, staggered sleeping patterns would have been helpful because it would mean that some of the tribe would be awake at any given time during the night to watch out for wild beasts that may attempt to prey on sleeping members of the group. I don't know how widely accepted that theory is within the scientific community, but it certainly seems to make a lot of sense to me.

Early riser for me these days.

I was a night owl throughout high school and college, easily able to stay up into the wee hours or even all night, then sleep until noon and do it all over again. However, in the late '90s, I took a job as an assistant manager at a bagel shop (after being one at McDonald's for about nine months) and I HAD to learn to get up early. The assistant manager was usually the one who opened the store, so I had to be there around 4:30 in the morning, and even though I lived nearby, I was up by 4:00 AM most days.

Nowadays, I'm up by 6:00 at the latest (usually by 5:30 or so), which suits me fine. During the week, I work 6:00 until 2:30 or so, then have the rest of the day to myself. On weekends, I'll be on the bike trail by 6:15 for a 10-mile ride and back home and showered before anyone else in my house is up, and on Sundays, I've done the grocery shopping for the week and put it away at home by 8:00 AM (the store doesn't open until 7:00, bunch of lazy slackers they are). I take naps when needed, and most nights I am in bed with the lights off between 10:30 and 11:00. I only hit midnight awake less than five times annually; there's just no need for me to be up that late for any reason.

Actually, my wife quite often complains that it's like living with a teenager.

I work nights, so I usually get home about 11 PM and it's 3 or 4 hours before I am ready to call it a night. I usually get up around noon to be in for 4:00. Fridays always mess me up because I have to do a split shift so in at 12, couple hour break in the middle and back for the evening and out at regular time, so I am mostly a night owl. When I was sheltering in place, I was going ot bed earlier and getting up earlier to have more daylight to work with while doing the home projects, but once I went back to work it was back to the night owl routine. I was a night owl at university and in grad school, but had to be a morning person when I was teaching for a decade or so, but my natural proclivity is towards night owl.

-M

I go to bed at 8 PM pretty regularly, even on the weekends. I used to get up at 4 AM to work out before work, but since the coronavirus hit and my gym closed, I've been getting up at 5:30 AM. The gym has since opened, but I haven't strted going back yet. I wake up multiple times during the night, so it's still not like I'm getting a ton of sleep. I am definitely a morning person though. I'm generally not good for too much after lunch.

Early riser.  I'm pretty high functioning when I wake up.