Yay! I’m less of a freak than I thought I was!

I have generally required far less sleep than my friends, and it has baffled many. My natural sleep pattern, when left to my own devices and without obligations, is from about 2am until 8am. I wake up energized and find that I can be fully productive within about 2-3 minutes. I don’t really nap during the day unless I’ve had a very physically strenuous or psychologically stressful day, and I have generally seemed to have more energy in general than most folks. When I was in middle school, I went for about a 6 month period only sleeping from midnight until 2 or 3am. In high school I used to sleep from about midnight until 4am.

I’m glad to see that this is not entirely unusual. It’s rare, but at least I now know that I’m not utterly destroying my health as so many people have suggested that I am, over the years. It’s not insomnia – believe me, there are nights when I have had that, and it’s different – it’s just that I naturally wake up after a shorter period of sleep than most people, and am more energized when I do.

For those of you who have wondered how I live a life where my average daily to-do list contains 18 items (recently I had one with 42 items on it), this should shed a little bit of light on the answer.