For some strange reason I’ve been waking up (apparently on my own) at 5:15 every morning this week. The problem is (in case it’s not obvious) that this is WAY too early for me to get up on a weekday. Even when I was fitting in a morning writing session during NaNo, 6am was plenty of time for that. No, 5:15 will not work.

Of course, the simple answer is for me to go back to sleep. Here’s where it gets hinky. Usually the wake up is one of those ‘bink! eyes open, mind alert, I’m aWAKE!’ wake-ups. So getting back to sleep takes a while–about half an hour on average. Well, now we’re closer to 6am, which would be a fine wake-up time (and when my alarm actually starts to play), bit no: now I am asleep. 6:30 would be fine, but usually I wake up after all of this around 7ish, very groggy, with 30 minutes to shower, dress, and get out of the house.

So the last couple of mornings I’ve been running really late and then rather busy at work and the evenings have been hectic as well. (Hence no posting the last two days.) Last night, however, I was so very tired that shortly after dinner I went to bed. I didn’t necessarily think this was the best idea but I was too tired to care. So it was that waking up at 11:30 was not all that surprising. I went back to sleep. Woke up again at 2am. This time I got up for about 5 minutes then tried to go back to sleep. It took a good amount of effort and sleep was spotty until about 4 when I woke again, this time i think it had more to do with neighborhood noise than anything. Car alarms and so forth, very unpleasant, very close. Finally, though, I made it past the 5:15 mark withOUT waking up.

This morning was the first in a while where my eyes opened at about 6:20, I was awake and alert and well-rested. I had plenty of time to get ready for work, life was good again.

Of course, now I’m facing the weekend. Maybe I should have reset the internal clock Sunday night instead of on a Thursday, maybe I’ll have to try this again next week at some point. But at least today I do not feel like I’m going to fall asleep at my desk!