The Thrilling Tale Of How I Managed To Give Myself Jet Lag During An International Lockdown

One of the best/worst parts of staying home these past months is that time has lost all meaning. I quickly discovered that the only thing keeping my night owl tendencies in check was life outside the house, so once that life evaporated, I took it as permission to shed my last clinging remnants of "normalcy" and embrace my Best Vampire Life.

And it was glorious.

At least for a while.

Nighttime is so peaceful, you guys. If you've never stayed up all night to write then I highly recommend it. There are no leaf blowers going, no phones ringing, no notifications clogging your screen. You can be alone with your thoughts and actually focus on a single thing at a time. So I leaned into the siren call of productivity and stayed up later and later, working all night and going to bed around dawn.

That schedule wasn't TOO bad, considering I usually stayed up 'til 3AM anyway, but there was a problem. I'd opened Pandora's box, y'all. I'd unleashed the beast. My internal clock was off the chain, drunk, and staggering around the living room in its underwear demanding we "KEEP THIS PARTY GOING WOOOOOO"

So I stayed up later. And later.

I told myself this was actually a good thing, because I was seeing the sunrise for the first time in decades. I'd open all the shades around 6:30 and watch the house slowly lighten with dancing rays of light, and listen to the nesting cardinals and mocking birds sing. It was so beautiful, so restful. The perfect way to end my day.

Once I was staying up 'til 7 or 8am, though, I realized I could get even MORE work done if I wrote the Facebook updates before going to bed. Except the CW post doesn't go up 'til 9AM.

So I stayed up past 9AM.

Once I was awake past 9AM I discovered more things I could do before going to bed: Now I could return phone calls and DMs, even chat with my early-bird friends who I usually never got to see.

I'll spare you the rest of this word journey, and skip to the part where I woke up to start my day at 11 o'clock... PM. By this point I never knew what day it was, because I'd wake up on a Tuesday and go to bed on a Wednesday. I lived in the in-betweens, a hazy purgatory of days... and it felt like it. To quote a famous scientist, I felt "so funky" 24/7: a little spacey, a lot disconnected, and I can only imagine what my poor cortisol levels were doing.

Sleeping through my online therapy session was a wake-up call... literally, since my therapist had to text John to ask where I was. (John was going to bed himself around dawn, so we'd both forgotten what day it was.)

I tried reining in my hours a bit, but by this point my internal clock was completely upside down. I was going to bed between 1-3PM, a full 12 hours off from my usual schedule - so I didn't know if I should move backwards or forwards!

Then came Mother's Day weekend, and the infamous Key Lime Donut Incident.

Many of you know I'm on a modified Low FODMAP diet to manage a lifetime of gut pain. Happily I can eat most donuts without issue, so long as they don't have milk in them, but I forgot how heinously bad High Fructose Corn Syrup is to me - and how most fruit-flavored donuts are packed with it.

So I ate a delicious Key Lime Krispy Kreme, and 8 hours later was in so much pain that it started to scare me, and triggered my first panic attack in 4 months. I spent the next day on the couch spooning a hot-pack, and since I couldn't sleep through the pain anyway, my addled brain decided I may as well add on to this misery pile and try to turn my sleep schedule around.



I did it cold turkey, no easing in, no sleep aids like melatonin, nada. I just refused to let myself sleep, staying up through whatever day that was, and finally collapsing around 8pm. Then I popped awake at 4 the next morning.

Not gonna lie, that first day was awful. But the next day? Oh man. The next day was so much worse.

 

(Suki knows. Suki understands.)

That next day also happened to be my birthday, so I was getting hundreds of sweet birthday messages, texts, and calls, all of which I answered in a mildly panicked haze, since I was so tired I wasn't exactly sure what I was typing, much less saying. So if any of you got an odd reply from me that day: an unexpected declaration of love, something you *think* was a joke but can't be sure, or random pictures of my cats, then now you know the rest of the story. 

That was also Epbot's 10th anniversary and the day I announced our new Epbot Movie Nights - something I'd been working up to for weeks and weeks, but in my haze I forgot to include the Discord link. That wasn't a huge deal, but it felt like it at the time, and I was convinced I was ruining everything and would never feel human again and WHY WAS THIS HAPPENING AAAAAA.  Poor John had an even worse day than I did, just being around me. 

Day 3 was a lot like Day 2, but with more yelling. I think I was going through the 7 stages of grief, right down to bargaining with John to just let me have a 6 hour nap at 3pm in return for my undying love - plus he could have Suki. When John gently suggested that sleeping wasn't a good idea, and that this would all be better soon, I vaguely remember yelling at a squirrel. I can't remember about what, exactly, but there was definitely a lot of yelling.

On Day 4 I felt pretty OK in the morning. I was waking up between 5-8AM, but I'd collapse around noon in something that was less a "nap" and more of a blackout. I gotta say, as someone who's struggled with insomnia for decades, it was almost alarming how much - and how easily - I was sleeping each day. Sleeping was no longer the hard part; staying awake was.

Here we are at Day 9 and I've gone 2 whole days without my afternoon black-out. I still feel pretty funky, but I'm proud to say I'm still waking up around 8 or 9am, because - and wow is THIS embarrassing - I haven't been able to get up that early in over 15 years.

I'm trying to practice better "sleep hygiene" by not looking at my phone or playing games while lying down in bed, which, I don't know if you've noticed, is SO HARD. If nothing else, I'll sit outside in the Wonderland room while I check Instagram, and then when I'm done I'll go to bed. Once in bed I put on my sleep phones and play a boring audio book to lull me to sleep, which only takes a few minutes right now. That's another first for me, or at least a first for the last two decades. Usually it takes between 1 and 4 hours for me to fall asleep, and for much of my adult life I've hated the sight of my own bed. My bed has been more a battlefield than a place of rest, a place where I lie awake in frustration, forever angry that I can't just WILL myself to sleep, no matter how hard I try.

So while this past week and a half has felt absolutely awful, and I wouldn't recommend turning your sleep schedule upside down overnight the way I did, at least this hard reset has given me a taste of what it's like to have a "normal" sleep schedule. I almost even see the appeal.

Now let's see how long this lasts.

 Suki remains... skeptical.

:D

Do you guys have any tips for maintaining a healthy sleep schedule? Or do any of you struggle like I do? C'mon, don't leave me hanging here: I can't be the only night owl who's lost control during quarantine, right?

Er... right?

******

I'm hesitant to mention this given the state of the world, but IF you have an uninterrupted income stream right now, and if you also love Epbot and want to help support me and John, then you can do so anytime, for any amount, through Paypal. We also have a subscription page where you can donate to us monthly, which you can cancel any time. Everyone who gives is automatically entered in our monthly Squeegineer Prize Give-Away, but let's be honest: we both know that's not why you give. You give because you can and because you're awesome, and I promise you we never take that for granted.

Your support - your dollars and your clicks and your social media shares - is what keeps Epbot running, my dear Squeegineers, so thank you, thank you, I love you.  ::mwah::