Nighttime Rituals

G

GeekOut

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Original poster
Many of my posts are made late at night, when I should probably be sleeping, but I'm interneting. It actually helps me to relax before bed. (I do know that it is supposed to make you more awake, but things often have opposite effects on me.) What do you do to fall asleep?
 
Hm... I'm a night owl. Like, extremely. I regularly stay awake until 4 or 5 in the morning. It's when I feel the most productive, so I'll often be cleaning, cooking, eating, drinking coffee, watching shows or movies, chatting with the boyfriend, browsing the internet... Eventually, all this will tire me out and I'll just fall asleep. If I feel like it'll be one of those nights where I won't sleep until 8 AM (or at all) my boyfriend pets my hair and whispers a lullaby to me. >///< It sounds childish, but it works.

When I look at my odd sleeping patterns, I often wish I had a job with a graveyard shift... I'd be the most enthusiastic, awake employee.
 
I have a sleep disorder, so my sleeping habits are whack. =___=;

Basically my biological clock is delayed by some odd hours, which means my body doesn't set off proper responses to make me feel tired on our normal 24-hour schedule. Like, people generally get tired around 10PM-11PM so they go to bed around those times. My body doesn't get tired until about...6AM so I usually go to bed around 7AM-8AM and sleep until 3PM-6PM.

I mean, when left to my own devices I function fine, but unfortunately, society is not nocturnal so I have to adjust to normal hours. In high school I would take a nap from 2-5AM, leave for school at 7AM, come home and go to bed at 3PM. xD Then I'd sleep until 9PM...It sounds chaotic and rough, but trust me, forcing me to sleep at night is like forcing someone to sleep the entire day. They have miserable, restless sleep and wake up really groggy.

On nights where I have to sleep at night because of something I have to do the next day, I usually play Pokemon on my DS. I don't do any of the storyline things though. I'll mostly breed of EV train since that stuff is really repetitive and boring. xD I'll also take sleep aids. I cycle between different kinds every few days since I take them so much. Q_Q I also have to make sure my bed is neat and my room temperature is cool.
 
Like Keagaaan, I have a really messed up sleep cycle, due to a circadian rhythm disorder. In my case, I have non-24 hour sleep-wake disorder...My 'day' consists of about 26 hours or so, rather than 24, likely due to my body's need for extended sleep (which is apparently normal for fibromyalgia, according to my doctor). I tend to be more of a night owl, but my sleep cycle shifts regularly, going alongside my bipolar and other things to just make a complete confusing mess.

I have days where I don't sleep at all for over 24 hours just to stay awake for appointments, and then I crash for about eighteen or so. It's an endless, bad cycle that's a pain in the butt to work with.

For me...When I feel close to ready to going to bed, I take a shower. It helps me relax to the point that I get dizzy, which I find helps me fall asleep. If I'm having an off day, I may take a valium to calm down, but that's extremely rare. I currently sleep in a leather reclining chair because my room is horrible and not ready to live in, and my mattress is on the floor and I'm no longer comfortable that way like I used to be (right now, I don't have a bed frame that fits in my room). My grandmother will be giving me a bed soon, so I have to get my room cleaned up more so I can put the bed in in the next few months. Then it'll be easier on the one hand to sleep, since I have black out curtains there to help keep the light out and I can work better with the temperature. Like Kea, I sleep better in cooler temperatures. I tend to have night sweats even in colder temperatures, so...Yeah.

...I don't understand half of what I just wrote, but here's my recent sleep cycle.

In the past five days....

Day 1: Fell asleep 4AM, woke up at 5PM
Day 2: Fell asleep at 2AM (more than 24 hours later) or so; Woke up at 7PM
Day 3: Similar as above.
Day 4: Similar as above- woke up at 5PM
TODAY: Finally fell asleep at like 2PM and woke up at 4-5PM.

I'm all over the place.
 
I like to read creepy pastas before sleep : )

Then wake up three hours later and read more creepy pastas.
 
I stay up for days on end until my body starts to crash. I get made fun of a lot when we're in the field, deployed or on a mission. Exception being when I am on ship. Because thee is literally little to do. In which case I work on my poetry, read and workout until such a time as my body begins the shut down process.
 
Before I go to bed I usually end up having some interesting conversations with friends, listen to music and try to just relax enough to go to bed. It's really just a pretty simple but it helps.
 
My family basically drilled into me a good sleeping schedule so I'll go to bed around 11 or so (before school started, I didn't used to sleep like this) and wake up at 8. As far as what I do to relax before sleeping, I typically lay down at around 10 and watch something on Netflix. It can't be anything too exciting otherwise I'm gonna have a ton of adrenaline going in my body. I also sometimes read but the downside to that is I don't want to put the book down.

But once I have a sleep cycle established, laying down on my bed is enough to trigger bed time for me.
 
I'm a naturally nocturnal person but I can set my sleep schedule to almost any time - I just wake up as the pissiest son of a bitch. Any time before eight AM though and you can kiss your ass goodbye - I'm in a murderous mood before them. Worse than that, my natural sleep time is about 12 hours. Still even though I can set my schedule, my biological clock drifts back to graveyard shift. Ideally, I would be sleeping from 8 am to 5 pm.

Before bed though, I usually read a book for about 20 minutes or so. I'm in the middle of the Maximum Ride series for my bedtime readings.
 
I work a night job with my boyfriend and often come home at 4 or 5 AM. Those nights I take my dog Isabel for a walk, smoke, and go to bed. I'm naturally a night owl. I usually study school related things or more frequently topics for my own personal knowing (usually about animal taxon and skeletal structure), listen to music, Netflix it up, or video game it up before bed. A couple times a week I hang out with my friend Condor and we usually talk about quantum physics, various scientific theories or discoveries, philosophy, sometimes ethics, and also paranormal activity (something I'm not spiritual enough to totally buy, but it's interesting to think about). I also take my dog out and spend quality time with my man almost every night immediately before bed, work or not. That's my ritual.
 
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