Troglodytes are us.

[kickaha]

ginkgo went and got new drapes for the bedroom yesterday - very thick, very solid drapes.

The bedroom is now *pitch black* at night. We both fell asleep much more quickly, and slept much more soundly. At least, I did. Since she gets up easier in the morning, she whips the drapes back and the blinds up first thing, and that helps kick start my circadian cycle. (Kick start. Cycle. Heh.)

I think this is going to help my sleep schedule a lot. I'm *very* sensitive to light levels, it seems. Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm a serious night owl. I work/play all night, sleep all day. This has caused me issues over the years, not the least of which is a complete lack of feeling rested. I can count the good nights of sleep in the past decade on my fingers, I bet.

Except when I'm camping, and then I'm completely diurnal. Sun goes down, I'm asleep. Sun comes up, I'm up. Heck, when I'm camping, I'll often get up at first light, and watch the sun rise. (This totally freaked out ginkgo the first time she witnessed this, since I woke *her* up to watch the sun rise over Badlands.) I sleep light when I camp, and frequently wake up to small noises, but I feel great the next morning.

Add in artificial light, a TV, a laptop, etc, and I'm up all night because darnit, there's still light. So, at my request, we've started lowering the lights at night. No more overheads past 9 or 10, just small lamps. That alone has helped a lot in getting me to bed by 12. I think the drapes are going to help a lot more.

Comments

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

I found out while on paternity leave (eight weeks, thanks to never using any vacation time up until then--not having a life occasionally has its advantages) that my cycle is 25 hours. I'd stay up an hour later every night, get up an hour later, and I got some of the best rest of my life. Maybe the only really good rest of my life.

Of course, I also ended up spending an awful lot of my active time during the times that the boy and M. were sleeping, and a corresponding amount of time sleeping while they were awake, which in other parlance is "the time when they needed me to be around and helpful". So that didn't last more than a couple of weeks.

On the other hand, I got a _lot_ of minis painted during the wee hours while the house was quiet and there was even less on TV than usual.

And now I have my Trazodone, which doesn't get me good rest, but does get me more and better rest than I'd get without it.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Yup, I'm the same way. Given my own lack of external input, I go about a 25hr cycle. Apparently this is very normal. We're very tied to light as a way of resetting the clock every day.

Unfortunately, I'm tied to an external schedule now, so I have to try and mesh at least a little bit. :}

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

Damn the business world and their slavish adherence to an arbitrary schedule. "Ooh, the sun's coming up. We'd better get out of bed!"

Hello! Electric lights, people! Duh!

[badger.livejournal.com]

There's a reason why my LJ profile reads "in search of the perfect 28-hour day". This is also the reason the master bedroom is downstairs, with *no* windows. (Well, a reason.)
And my getting up before M, as mentioned recently, offends her sense of the natural order of things :).

[lirrin.livejournal.com]

Hrm. That sounds exactly like me. Only I don't sleep in total darkness, and never have (there was a streetlight outside my window when I was a kid.) But I'm the same way...general night owl, and asleep or up with the sun when camping. I wake up a million times a night, and am a generally restless sleeper who never feels fully recovered in the morning.

I wonder what sleeping in pitch blackness would do. It'd be novel, that's for sure. I've always pooh-poohed it, since I have ZERO trouble falling asleep...but maybe I'd stay out more thoroughly. I'll have to check it out.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was out in a matter of... seconds last night? No more than two minutes, and normally I take a long time to go to sleep, even when I'm exhausted. It was *weird*. Nice though.

Woke up at 4am on the dot, and almost got out of bed - felt like I was between REM cycles, and was actually pretty awake all of a sudden. Decided that was silly to do, since I didn't want to end up being up all night, (although if it happens again, I may run with it) and went immediately back to sleep. Woke up at 8:30, and didn't exactly bounce out of bed, but at least it didn't feel like a struggle.

We noticed that as soon as the drapes were up, and the room was dark, the cat slept on the bed all evening. She never does that - she normally naps on the bed a bit, but only for short spells. When she *sleeps* she goes into a very dark box she adopted. So... I figure if the critter thinks that dark is good for sleep, it probably is. :)

[jason0x21.livejournal.com]

I've got metal blinds, which do a great job of blocking light. The closest light outside seems to be broken a lot, too. L. needs even more light blockage than I do, and sound blockage more than that. I'm looking into making her a crypt.

I fall asleep at raves. Loud music and bright lights, and I'm still out light a... well, asleep at any rate. Just fine, thanks.

[ginkgo.livejournal.com]

We(Our landlord) have(has) plastic blinds which don't do very much. :( We are also on the top of a hill, above most of the pesky light-blocking trees in the neighborhood. :P I was thrilled with how much sound the curtains blocked. Today was a trash day and I normally wake up when the truck is on the next street(I didn't today.)

I'd sleep like a dream in a crypt. Two of our friends had a town home with a crazy coat closet on the first floor and the stairs wrapped around the closet. There was so much wasted space under the stairs that the builder dry-walled and painted the irregular space behind the area where coats would hang to be used for storage. Screw coats, that would totally have been my bedroom.

[zenhack.livejournal.com]

I also need to work much harder on this, I frequently go to bed way to close to sunrise for it to be healthy.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

I think it's a genetic predisposition in homo geekus to be honest. :/

[herithoth.livejournal.com]

Your experience of waking up in the middle of the night and then getting a second sleep is the experience of two-phase sleeping that most of mankind used to experience before the invention of modern lighting. People living in the Amazon and other remote areas of the globe still do. Sleeping continuously is a actually abnormal for human beings. People used to talk to each other and interpret their dreams, sew, have sex etc. in the darkness when they woke up in between. They say that people are meditating trying to recapture this state of mind. Exposure to light late at night raises one's risk of cancer too since it affects pituitary hormone release.

I've been trying to beat back the light that our bedroom gets from the security lights at the new place with blankets and now shades over the windows. We might go to blackout curtains if that doesn't work.

[ginkgo.livejournal.com]

The book we discussed with you last month got us talking about this topic again. I'd love to know the title. Was it _Nighttime_?

I was really unhappy with the curtain selections I found. I considered making my own, but I'm trying to relax away from having to do everything myself. When testing the light-filtering capabilities of the curtains in stores, I'm sure I looked like I was playing hide-and-seek with an imaginary friend. :)