Open All Hours (Sleepless in San Juan)

A few years ago, I wrote a piece called Confessions of a Night Owl. It was a tantrum on paper written after being awoken at 6:00 am, which to me was an ungodly hour of the morning, since I often was doing my best writing from midnight to 2:00 am. Confessions of a Night Owl was more about the torture of lack of sleep than it was about my being a night owl. It rekindled a longtime question, "Is being a night owl inborn or habitual in nature?" 
 

Everyone I know has an opinion about that. Most of them say it's habitual, not coincidentally, the same most of them are morning larks. I've lived in both worlds, depending on what life demanded or allowed. The only real problem I've ever found with sleep patterns was when the prevailing pattern resulted in insufficient sleep. Like it or not, I need eight hours, darn it. With daylight savings time once again upon us, I remember that every Spring when we have to jump forward an hour, my usually late bedtime turns into ridiculously late, and I make yet another attempt to reform myself. 

Now that I've come to live in the land of "let's roll up the sidewalks at nine pm, nobody's up anyway", otherwise known as "only patrons of Herb's stay up past nine", the question has become, once again, pressing. There's just too much going on here during the morning hours to miss out. As with other types of reform, for me there has to be a good (selfish) incentive. Not missing out on fun stuff is a good one for me. 

Thankfully, this time my internet search brought up much more interesting results than my previous attempts to get scientific data, or at least some encouraging words on the subject. I found an excerpt from a book published by the Wesleyan Press called, Money, Sex, and Spiritual Power. 

Author Keith Drury ends his book with a chapter called Becoming a Morning Person. It's a funny account of how this minister retrained himself into being a morning lark. After his initial suggestion, "Determine if God wants you to do this", this surprisingly non preachy piece was full of easy to implement suggestions. He also says, "writers are notorious for being night owls." Yeah, I knew there was a connection. 

Then on Slate.com I found a nice little article called Can a Night Owl Become a Morning Person by Deepa Ranganathan. It's a fun ride along with someone after my own heart, a night owl looking to reform. 

I have to admit part of my quest to become part of the seeming majority known as morning larks has to do with the quest to pair up. Having spent much of my life living with extreme morning larks without significant reform on my part, I think being more realistic in the future is going to work much better than trying to be something clearly I am not. 

Maybe night owl reform is like so many other types of reform. Moderation in all things seems to apply here as well. Despite what my research has taught me so far, I think I'm going to have to keep fumbling around for a solution that works. 

Baby steps and incremental change is the only way I know to change any habit. Which is what Deepa Ranganathan decides in the end as well. And maybe, just maybe, I am yet to discover something about San Juan I don't know yet. Like where all the night owls are. 

© M.E. Rollins