Disorderly Conduct

I think people who can lie down and fall asleep until it’s time to wake up are the luckiest people in the world. And also some of the advice-iest people in the world. Being a lifelong bad sleeper, I have been told by the sleep-easy crowd that I don’t get enough fiber, exercise, and/or protein. It has been suggested that I should just lie in bed because I am really probably getting more sleep than I think. I even had a counselor query whether smoking pot would be the answer. Lots of advice, very little remedy. The fact is, you are either a good sleeper or you’re not, generally speaking. Every easy sleeper has an occasional restless night and every insomniac has moments of complete exhaustion resulting in deep slumber, but we come here wired a certain way and that’s just the facts. I recently discovered through a high school friend that there is a name for what ails us: Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. Basically, DSPS-afflicted folk have a different rhythm than the nine-to-five crowd and they will never understand us. If you are a DSPSer, three in the morning is productive time and early morning staff meetings are torturous. Think about it--asking a DSPSer to come to work at 7:30am is the same as asking the normals to come in at 4:00am. Which sounds ridiculous, right? But it’s our reality. In Sandra Boynton’s The Going To Bed Book, the monsters learn some skills. I hope they have good wiring.

http://www.amazon.com/Going-Bed-Book-Sandra-Boynton/dp/0671449028

http://www.sandraboynton.com/sboynton/index.html