Late night reception

I'm sitting here in reception at 11:20pm trying to stay awake until 12:30pm, and musing over how ridiculous this is. This time last year I would still have been working, the headlining band probably not even having started, and not looking at getting to sleep for at least another four or five hours. On top of that, I would have been awake by 6am to get to an airport to fly somewhere else.

Now, however, I'm in the country and have grown used to going to sleep by around 9pm and waking up at 5am. To prepare for my Uberman schedule (which I'm going to start in three weeks, on March 8), I've switched my current sleeping pattern to a six hour chunk (from 12:30am to 6:30am), with one 25 minute nap (at 6:00pm). I've also changed my exercise schedule to slot in nicely - I wake up, go for a run, swim in the river (although that's starting to get pretty freakin' cold, I'm not sure how many more weeks that little caper will be happening), then start work. At 11:00pm (most nights, clearly I'm not doing it tonight), I do yoga and meditation, then fall asleep about ten minutes after finishing that.

I'm enjoying this rehearsal run, I must say. It's already challenging making sure I stick to my 6:00pm nap, and I've realised I'm going to have to rely on every last vestige of rostering skills (not to mention more than a dash of blatant pleading and begging) to be able to duck off for a nap three times a work day. I'm considering converting the small office next door into a makeshift bedroom, or naproom as the case may be.

I've also noticed that for the first time that I can remember, being really tired isn't always resulting in an almost frenzied hyperactivity that seems to be my body's equivalent of a lawnmower's violent shuddering when almost out of fuel. In a few cases I've been amazed to feel everything slow down quite remarkably, to the point where the tiredness seems to bring everything into a slower focus. If this kind of thing happens when I'm just napping six times a day, I'll be ecstatic. One downside is that I've been dropping things a lot since yesterday. Most things, in fact, that I try to do anything with, I drop. That may have nothing to do with sleeping though, I suppose I am pretty clumsy at the best of times, and I may just be making unreasonable associations.

I'm going to have to start coming up with a huge list of things to do, I've worked out that sitting down reading the five million or so books I want to read probably won't be a really viable way of staying awake in the first few weeks. After watching the special features section of the movie 21 today, I thought I'd take a leaf out of Steve Pavlina's book and teach myself how to count cards, I want to get some more writing done (I have a list of short story competitions stretching to July), and I might even come down here and do some resort work late at night (for instance, I just vacuumed the restaurant before coming on here). I also plan to do lots of walking. Perhaps I'll finally teach myself to draw too - oh, and I'm still working my way through an audio course on learning German. I think I might need a few more activities than this somehow.

I've got to say, I enjoy sitting in reception playing Melvins loudly. It's not often I can get away with that.