Partying Until The Early Hours

I am a night owl, not a morning person. The hardest thing I do every day is get out of bed. My alarm goes off, and I doze and doze until I have no choice but to get up if I want to make it to work on time. Even on the weekends, when I wake up - whether by alarm or not - I turn over at least once or twice before I actually get my butt out of bed.

On the other hand, I often have a hard time making myself go to sleep. Especially if I'm reading a good book. Every night, before I go to sleep, I get into bed and open a book. It's a rare night that I don't read for at least a half hour before I turn out the lights to sleep. If the book is intriguing, it might be even later.

When I was in college, staying up late - talking and/or reading and/or hanging with my boyfriend - was the norm. I almost never had classes before noon. So I could stay up until the early hours of the morning without compromising my GPA. My boyfriend for my junior and senior years of college was also a night owl. I'd be surprised if we went to sleep before midnight very often. It was not uncommon for us to still be awake at 1 or 2 am. I usually got 8 hours of sleep, but it was between 2 am and 10 am.

I explain all this because last night I was up until 1 am. And today, I am exhausted. I slept until 9:30 am this morning. I got more than enough sleep. And 20 or 30 years ago, I would have been just fine after getting to sleep late and getting up late. I would have gotten to class, done my homework, and stayed up late again the next night.

But today, I had to take a nap. Waking up from my nap, I felt as if I could have slept straight through till tomorrow morning. I did get up and finish my errands. I even went to the gym and worked out. But right now, at 7:30 pm, I feel like I could go to sleep again. This is one of the areas in which I don't like getting older.

At 47, I'm afraid that partying until the early hours means the early hours of the night - not the morning.