Friday - The Beat of Circadian Rhythms

[ninanevermore]

The one luxury of being unemployed is that you get to sleep late. I miss having money to blow, but I do like feeling well rested. I read somewhere that getting at least 8 hours of sleep at night is supposed to help you lose weight, but I have to say I don't think it's working in my case.

There is something invigorating about getting to wake up with the sun rather than before it. On my own, I find I wake up around 7:30 AM without a problem. The daylight is slipping through my window at that hour and it's still early enough that I don't feel like the day has been wasted. Still, for most of life - starting with my mother tossing a pitcher full of ice water on me to get me out of bed as a child when rousing me any other way failed - I have wondered why people who get up early have always been the ones to make the rules. Owls may be wise, but Larks seem to be the industrious ones that run the companies and administer the schools. I have a theory about how this came to be.

Some time back before anyone can remember, a Lark and an Owl were making plans about how things should be. The Lark showed up bright and early at the Owl's place, as Larks tend to do.

"Good morning!" the Lark said to the bleary-eyed Owl, "I've made some decisions that I want to run by you."

"Is it morning?" the Owl asked, yawning, "I couldn't tell, what with it still being dark outside. What time is it, anyway?"

"It's time to get moving! It's time to get to work!* Here's what I think: the average work day should start at 8 AM and run to about 5 PM. Of course, anyone with a commute is going to have to wake up at 5 or 6 to get out of the house by 7, but then everyone gets to go home for supper and be ready for bed by 9 PM! Then, the next day they can get up and start the whole thing over again! Doesn't that sound great?"

"I need coffee," said the Owl. "Extra strong coffee with lots of cream and sugar. It's the breakfast of the champions. 9 PM? I don't even get tired until around midnight. At 9 I'm still busy and energetic. Why on earth would I want to go to bed then? I'd just toss and turn for hours if I do."

"So you can get up at 6 AM the next day, silly! I get my best energy first thing in the morning! With my plan, I can pour all that productivity into my job until I'm ready to pass out from exhausting at 5. This is going to work out great!"

"I seem to be out of coffee," said the Owl, "How can I be out of coffee? Rats, I meant to drop by the store and forgot. Look, Lark, I don't think it's a good idea at all. If I show up at the office at 8, I don't really reach any sort of real productivity until maybe 10. Before that, I'm still sleepy. I like a late lunch, and then I reach my peak productivity around 3:30 or so. Under you plan, just when I have my hands in the middle of something and I'm revved up and at my best, it's suddenly time to go home. Dragging me into the office at 8 doesn't help me get more work done -- it just forces me to spend more time drinking coffee and praying for the weekend to come so I can catch up on my sleep."

"You're exaggerating," said the Lark, "I think you're lazy."

"I'm not lazy. I get a lot done, just later in the day than you. I think you're annoying," said the Owl, "Please leave."

"OK, but I'm setting things up without you."

"Fine," said the Owl, "Whatever. I'm going back to bed."

And that's what the Owl did. Meanwhile, the Lark went out and started the Industrial Revolution, with its set work schedules and time clocks. While the Owl did get to go back to bed that one day, he woke up to a world that lives by the Lark's rules. If he had stopped by the store the day before and bought coffee, he might have been able to argue his point better and things could be very different, but he didn't. The rest is history.

I think about this often when I put my son in his crib at 9 PM and then listen to him talk to himself and sing until he falls asleep as late as 11 on some nights. He used to go to bed at 8, but he still didn't fall asleep until 11, so I let him push bedtime back. My husband has pointed out that when two Owls mate, it's not likely that their hatchling will be a Lark. Our nest has two adult Owls, and one baby Owl. When I get him out of bed in the morning, he curls up against me and whimpers a little.

One of theses days he's going to hate that school starts so early.

It would be nice for him if all the Owls in the world united and planned a revolution to overthrow the tyranny of the ruling Larks, but it's not likely that could ever happen. Overthrowing them would require that we wake up early to toss a wrench in their crack-of-dawn plans and then force them all to go back to bed, at gunpoint if necessary. The problem is, by the time all the Owls woke up and staggered in for the revolution, the Larks would all be onto our plans and they would stop us. It's futile.

Thank God for coffee. It's the only think that makes living in a Lark world remotely bearable.


* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

*Another irritating fact about Larks is that they tend to use way too many exclamation points.

Comments

living in a Lark world

[regatomic.livejournal.com]

it think there are a goodly more owls, a commune where the time is different seems in order, let the larks make the world they wish,.. the owls can be fine in their own space,..:)

[m-malcontent.livejournal.com]

I have never touched a cup of coffee (I like my caffeine cold, like my women)...but when the revolution comes why don't we plan it for 1 am...I am always up at 1...those early to bed bastards are having REM sleep...I could kill thousands of em..by myself!

[kira-snugz.livejournal.com]

i am an owl married to a lark, with an odd cress breed child. she loooves to stay up late (11/12) but then she delightas is getting up early (8/9).

to make the situation even more fun, i have medicine induced insomnia. for me, an early night involves turning the light out before midnight and then lying awake in bed till 3 am anyways. when i have an early morning, it means i dragged my butt out of bed around 10.

[lil-ms-drama.livejournal.com]

Larks need to die!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If I could, my workday would start around 10am and end around 6pm. I'm perfectly happy eating at my desk while working at the computer, so I wouldn't even need an hour lunch break, just a few minutes to nuke my lunch.

Oh, and Ben Franklin was an idiot
http://www.epidemiologic.org/2007/01/refuting-franklin-and-thurber-early-to.html

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

Have you tried giving your Lark coffee in the evening to keep him awake? Not that this will convert him long-term, no more than being forced to be at my high school at 7:20 in the morning did a thing to convert me. Boy was I excited to get to college and realize it was possible to have my earliest class start at noon...^_^

Re: living in a Lark world

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

We need more Owl entrepreneurs to start companies that don't open until after 10 AM so they can hire other Owls to work for them. If enough Owls do this, the revolution can be a peaceful one. ;D

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I drink diet Coke and coffee both; it's a woman thing, to vacillate between hot and cold.

True, we could schedule the revolution for the middle of the night when they are all asleep. They would never know what hit them...

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

Mixed marriages are always tough. Going to be at different times, it's a wonder you ever met in the middle to make a hatchling. ~_^

Insomnia sucks. I suppose you've talked to your doc about the side effect? Sleep deprivation is hard on a body and has to be weighed against the benefits the medicine should be giving you. :(

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

Despite that stupid comment he made, I have to rise to ol' Ben's defense: he was by far the coolest of the founding fathers. He, like most Larks, simply failed to see that different people's brains work differently. Sleeping late is not a character flaw so long as that when you do wake up you are a productive person. Sleeping late is just how some of us are wired.

I find that creative people tend to be Owls in general. Larks need us for our ideas and because we make the world more interesting. Perhaps we need our own pithy saying:
He who plans and works deep into the night
creates innovations come morning's sunlight.
OK, so I'm no Ben Franklin. But I think I'm on to something.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

(*smacks forehead*) You're right! How blind I've been!

Sigh me up for the revolution. I'm so there.

[welfy.livejournal.com]

This entire post made me chuckle. I'm an Owl forced to live in a Lark world. My huge problem is that my boyfriend isn't really anything--he keeps weird hours since he's a truck driver. :^) He's hard to keep up with!

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

Let's call Soup a mocking bird; he can mimic any schedule that life throws at him. Must be nice!