View Full Version : Anyone Else Nocturnal...?
All of my life, as far back as I can remember, I have had difficulty going to sleep when everyone else did. I would lay in bed completely awake and alert just waiting for sleep that wouldn't come for many more hours.
I would spend that time getting acquainted with the night. Laying in bed in my darkened room starting out the window. Searching the shadows, watching small things move, observing the stillness. Every single night was spent like this until I was old enough to explore the night time world.
When I was perhaps 11 or 12, after years of the night calling to me, I slipped out the window. At first I confined my travels to my immediate surroundings. I learned dark greys and browns conceal better than dark black which creates a hard silhouette. I learned that in the dark it is movement that is seen and not shapes. I stayed low, often flat, I learned to listen before I moved, I scanned the entire area...where I was and where I intended to go. I chose emergency concealment points along the way should something previously unobserved arise.
I moved deftly from shadow to shadow, pausing to see if I had been observed, and when the night remained still and quiet, I moved again. I learned to scan the area in front of me for tell tale flashes of headlights behind me which had just turned onto the road. I learned to check the rear with every 5th step I took. I learned to climb trees in close so as to not produce a recognizable silhouette, only moving one limb at a time in a slow deliberate manner that didn't shake the limbs or produce much movement.
I learned to emit a low whistle before entering any fenced yard that might contain a dog and to then listen for the tell tale rattling of a chain or dog tags on a collar. I learned to approach into the wind whenever possible. Dogs do not smell you and the scent of somebody smoking in the dark is carried towards you. You then simply look for the glow of the burning cigarette.
I learned the moon creates many shadows and offers a great amount of illumination if it is needed, and that the new moon is the darkest night when such things are preferred. I learned rainy nights are the perfect night to accomplish a goal. Most night owls are driven indoors, the sound of rain and thunder covers any sounds you might make and heavy rain eliminated your tracks.
I began to go out into the night several nights a week. I would give myself "missions" to accomplish. I spent much of my daydream time coming up with challenges for myself, the more difficult to achieve the better. The more stealth required to be successful, the better. At around 4 am I would come home and sleep the most restful sleep I had ever known. Getting up in the morning for school would become one of the hardest things I had to do. I was no friend of the morning.
I became talented. I would observe neighborhood cats moving through yards only a few feet from me completely unaware of my presence. When I attempted to approach them unobserved they would freeze in place sometimes only 6-10 feet from me before sprinting to safety. I would sit still and motionless for what seemed like endless periods of time listening to how loud my heartbeat was, controlling my breathing through special exercises which limited how often I needed to inhale and exhale. After years of practice I could drop a rapid heartbeat from my last sprint to a relaxed rate in a matter of seconds. I could control my breathing to an almost imperceptible level. And as a consequence of my trained breathing patterns I would render every polygraph evaluation ever taken as an adult inconclusive.
As a teen I began to conduct night activities with my friends and those who were kinda friends. I attempted to teach some what I knew, but most were more interested in the usual teenage mischief associated with being loose at night than anything I had to teach them. It is probably for the best as their efforts, which usually were related to vandalism, petty theft of property left out at night or tapping on girls windows didn't need higher rates of success.
I found a couple who were like me, and we became a cohesive unit. We would come to know what each other would do, how they would do it and when they would do it without a word needing to be spoken. We devised hand signals for communication long before we knew what a Navy SEAL even was. But it was about this time that I met a student of Bud Malmstrom and I began learning the Togakure system. Before that I relied on books by Andrew Adams and the Donn Draeger to get a few pointers.
This continued well into adulthood. No matter how crappy my minimum wage job was, even if I didn't get off work until 2 am, I would be gearing up "to train" and would be in the shadows with my current "crew" until 4-5 am. I would find all manner of excuses to train. Every weekend there would be night time paintball games with my adult friends whose wives still let them out to play at such hours.
Only very recently, with the demands of running my own business are my early AM hours spent indoors. Taking care of a few things that demand my attention which cannot be done during the day with phones ringing, dogs whining to go outside and other constant interruptions. I then usually relax by winding down with a movie or good TV show and an Ovaltine. I then retire to bed between 2 and 4 am and read until I can finally fall asleep.
But when I shut off the light I still spend some time looking out the window, and the moon behind dark clouds still calls to me. I still search the shadows and watch the small things move in the dark. The primal urge within me still longs to practice my predatory nature and go looking for things that need doing and feats that require accomplishment. I still note the position and phase of the moon, I instinctively plot paths of travel from various points to other points based upon greatest levels of concealment offered by a given approach.
Belmont31R
02-01-12, 00:10
I have ALWAYS been a night owl, and I feel most awake from about 5-12PM.
I did the early wake up thing throughout HS and in the military but it was always a drag. Even if I get 4-6hrs of sleep, and wake up at 7AM Ill not feel tired until midnight or later. It takes several days of this before Ill just be too tired to stay up, and then I feel like shit.
Its not like I sleep 10hrs a day or anything. I can go to bed at 2, wake up, at 9, and feel fine. 7hrs of sleep which is about average. I just can't wake up at 7, and go to bed at midnight. Ill feel like crap and tired the whole day.
I almost feel like we need 30hr days not 24. Last night I was up til 530AM and woke up at 9AM to get our boys up, showered, and dressed. 1210AM here right now, and Im wide awake ready to go.
If I have no structure for a period of time more than a few days, no appointments, no obligations, just my own time...I naturally gravitate toward being nocturnal. Within a day or two I will be awake all night and sleep during the day. I'm a weirdo in that I only get 5 or so hours of sleep in a 24 hour period anyway, so it's not too bad getting back into a normal schedule afterward. Monday mornings can be a pain in the ass though. By Sunday bed time feels like it should be right when I have to get up Monday morning. But after that it's smooth sailing the rest of the week.
I don't know if it was always this way. Only started to notice it after the first trip to Iraq, when we were servicing targets every night and doing **** all during the day. I'd generally wake up as it was getting dark and get back to bed a few hours after sunrise or whenever we got back in. Sometimes it felt like weeks at a time would go by without seeing the sun for more than a few minutes except to get up and piss in the middle of the "night" (day). I'm sure that has something to do with it.
No complaints though. I much prefer night time to day time anyway. Nothing good happens before 12AM.
Belmont31R
02-01-12, 01:12
One thing Ive noticed is its almost never females who have problems going to bed. Its almost always males. Ive always thought it had something to do with the hunter/gatherer history of our species and most prey species are most active at night. The females would be doing the dirty work and looking after the kids while the men brought back food and meat. It makes sense that males would be up at night hunting and spending all night bringing back meat for the next day or week.
I too have been nocturnal as far back as I can remember. In my early teens I would slip out my window in the wee hours of the morning, climb the radio tower of my local high school and observe the city lights. From 510ft in the air the city seemed so far away even though I was right in the middle of it. I love the night.
Familiar places seemed foreign in the darkness and I was eager to explore them. My friends and I would roam the creek and drainage tunnels for hours before parting ways and slipping back into our windows.
polymorpheous
02-01-12, 03:48
3rd shift.
variablebinary
02-01-12, 05:07
It's no accident that certain people seem to post in the late hours every single day.
Some people really are creatures of the night. My wife is not. She's out like a rock by 11pm most nights.
I've gotten home from long painful FTX's and still couldn't get to sleep. My body just doesn't work that way unless I am totally exhausted.
montanadave
02-01-12, 08:18
My internal clock reset sometime in my late forties. A late night for me is staying up till 9:00 PM. But I'm usually up by 4:00 AM.
Interesting post, Steyr. You write well.
Some people really are creatures of the night. My wife is not. She's out like a rock by 11pm most nights.
My wife and I have had this very discussion, many times. If my wife had her choice, she's be in bed by 9 and up no later than 5 am. Me, my 'best' time is late morning to late night, and I have no problem staying up till midnight or 1 am. My issue is that every freakin' job I have had requires me to be up early.
Definitely NOT! Early to bed and early to rise. Have to get the shooting out of the way so I can start processing brass and cleaning wepunz!
Iraqgunz is HORRIBLE about this. He never makes a shoot anymore. :mad: (someone give him an infraction)
nobody knows
02-01-12, 11:09
My wife is the same, in bed by ten out by eleven. I am definitely a night person. I only sleep about 3-4 hours a day. I get by on that just fine, then on one of my days off I will sleep for 9-10 hours. My wife gets so mad some times because she wants me to lay down with her and sleep like a "normal" person as she puts it. But I can't.
Evil Colt 6920
02-01-12, 11:32
By nature Im 100% a night owl. Always have been. It runs in the family. Ive worked jobs that required me to be up at 5am and this was absolutely brutal for me. It takes me several months of "early rising" before Im actually able to appreciate the calm and quite of early morning. Ill admit the early morn is a beautiful time of day. I Just prefer to stay awake all night to get there :p
Exact opposite. Early to bed and early to rise. If i sleep past 7am the day is wasted.
RancidSumo
02-01-12, 11:44
Given the choice, I'd sleep from around three to nine or so. Unfortunately life prevents that right now.
My grandfather was always the opposite. He was in bed by nine and awake before four every day. He said that if you aren't up by then you miss the best part of the day. When I'd visit and wake up around nine, he'd come in from already having worked a few hours and greet me with either, "Well its about time you woke up" or "Good afternoon". I don't know how he did it.
One thing Ive noticed is its almost never females who have problems going to bed. Its almost always males. Ive always thought it had something to do with the hunter/gatherer history of our species and most prey species are most active at night. The females would be doing the dirty work and looking after the kids while the men brought back food and meat. It makes sense that males would be up at night hunting and spending all night bringing back meat for the next day or week.
Probably something to that. But probably a case of standing guard.
Magic_Salad0892
02-01-12, 21:08
My peak hours are 8pm-5am.
Girlfriend is early up, and early out.
If I wake up before noon, I am hate.
Magic_Salad0892
02-01-12, 21:11
All of my life, as far back as I can remember, I have had difficulty going to sleep when everyone else did. I would lay in bed completely awake and alert just waiting for sleep that wouldn't come for many more hours.
I would spend that time getting acquainted with the night. Laying in bed in my darkened room starting out the window. Searching the shadows, watching small things move, observing the stillness. Every single night was spent like this until I was old enough to explore the night time world.
When I was perhaps 11 or 12, after years of the night calling to me, I slipped out the window. At first I confined my travels to my immediate surroundings. I learned dark greys and browns conceal better than dark black which creates a hard silhouette. I learned that in the dark it is movement that is seen and not shapes. I stayed low, often flat, I learned to listen before I moved, I scanned the entire area...where I was and where I intended to go. I chose emergency concealment points along the way should something previously unobserved arise.
I moved deftly from shadow to shadow, pausing to see if I had been observed, and when the night remained still and quiet, I moved again. I learned to scan the area in front of me for tell tale flashes of headlights behind me which had just turned onto the road. I learned to check the rear with every 5th step I took. I learned to climb trees in close so as to not produce a recognizable silhouette, only moving one limb at a time in a slow deliberate manner that didn't shake the limbs or produce much movement.
I learned to emit a low whistle before entering any fenced yard that might contain a dog and to then listen for the tell tale rattling of a chain or dog tags on a collar. I learned to approach into the wind whenever possible. Dogs do not smell you and the scent of somebody smoking in the dark is carried towards you. You then simply look for the glow of the burning cigarette.
I learned the moon creates many shadows and offers a great amount of illumination if it is needed, and that the new moon is the darkest night when such things are preferred. I learned rainy nights are the perfect night to accomplish a goal. Most night owls are driven indoors, the sound of rain and thunder covers any sounds you might make and heavy rain eliminated your tracks.
I began to go out into the night several nights a week. I would give myself "missions" to accomplish. I spent much of my daydream time coming up with challenges for myself, the more difficult to achieve the better. The more stealth required to be successful, the better. At around 4 am I would come home and sleep the most restful sleep I had ever known. Getting up in the morning for school would become one of the hardest things I had to do. I was no friend of the morning.
I became talented. I would observe neighborhood cats moving through yards only a few feet from me completely unaware of my presence. When I attempted to approach them unobserved they would freeze in place sometimes only 6-10 feet from me before sprinting to safety. I would sit still and motionless for what seemed like endless periods of time listening to how loud my heartbeat was, controlling my breathing through special exercises which limited how often I needed to inhale and exhale. After years of practice I could drop a rapid heartbeat from my last sprint to a relaxed rate in a matter of seconds. I could control my breathing to an almost imperceptible level. And as a consequence of my trained breathing patterns I would render every polygraph evaluation ever taken as an adult inconclusive.
As a teen I began to conduct night activities with my friends and those who were kinda friends. I attempted to teach some what I knew, but most were more interested in the usual teenage mischief associated with being loose at night than anything I had to teach them. It is probably for the best as their efforts, which usually were related to vandalism, petty theft of property left out at night or tapping on girls windows didn't need higher rates of success.
I found a couple who were like me, and we became a cohesive unit. We would come to know what each other would do, how they would do it and when they would do it without a word needing to be spoken. We devised hand signals for communication long before we knew what a Navy SEAL even was. But it was about this time that I met a student of Bud Malmstrom and I began learning the Togakure system. Before that I relied on books by Andrew Adams and the Donn Draeger to get a few pointers.
This continued well into adulthood. No matter how crappy my minimum wage job was, even if I didn't get off work until 2 am, I would be gearing up "to train" and would be in the shadows with my current "crew" until 4-5 am. I would find all manner of excuses to train. Every weekend there would be night time paintball games with my adult friends whose wives still let them out to play at such hours.
Only very recently, with the demands of running my own business are my early AM hours spent indoors. Taking care of a few things that demand my attention which cannot be done during the day with phones ringing, dogs whining to go outside and other constant interruptions. I then usually relax by winding down with a movie or good TV show and an Ovaltine. I then retire to bed between 2 and 4 am and read until I can finally fall asleep.
But when I shut off the light I still spend some time looking out the window, and the moon behind dark clouds still calls to me. I still search the shadows and watch the small things move in the dark. The primal urge within me still longs to practice my predatory nature and go looking for things that need doing and feats that require accomplishment. I still note the position and phase of the moon, I instinctively plot paths of travel from various points to other points based upon greatest levels of concealment offered by a given approach.
You're not a bad writer at all.
There is substantive and convincing evidence that people with nocturnal tendencies are on average more intelligent than early to bed early to rise types. Don't get butt-hurt early birds, you might be on the high end of the spectrum for your kind. Everyone else is just pulling you down...and everyone's kids are good looking and you can be President. :D
Google "nocturnal people more intelligent"
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201005/why-night-owls-are-more-intelligent-morning-larks
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/smart-people-sleep-late-82486792.html
Yeah Im a night owl as well. I prefer to stay up well into the wee hours, get about 5 hours sleep and I'm good to go. My daughter is a night owl. She's been that way since she was a baby. But she needs a solid 9 hours of sleep at a bare minimum.
Magic_Salad0892
02-01-12, 21:36
Yeah Im a night owl as well. I prefer to stay up well into the wee hours, get about 5 hours sleep and I'm good to go. My daughter is a night owl. She's been that way since she was a baby. But she needs a solid 9 hours of sleep at a bare minimum.
3-6 for me. Same for her though.
3rd shift.
Same here. I've been on it for five years now and I love it. I've been a night owl since I was around 14. I typically go to bed on my off nights at 5-6 in the morning and sleep til 1pm.
There is substantive and convincing evidence that people with nocturnal tendencies are on average more intelligent than early to bed early to rise types. Don't get butt-hurt early birds, you might be on the high end of the spectrum for your kind. Everyone else is just pulling you down...and everyone's kids are good looking and you can be President. :D
Google "nocturnal people more intelligent"
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201005/why-night-owls-are-more-intelligent-morning-larks
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/smart-people-sleep-late-82486792.html
Perhaps. But the grades don't always support it. I always had to schedule classes that were unimportant like PE or subjects where I was really strong like History in the morning. If I tried to understand Algebra at 10am I wouldn't have stood a chance.
I am nocturnal by nature and have to force myself into any other schedule. And I always start slipping after a while.
Thomas M-4
02-01-12, 22:19
Yea I am always the last one to sleep in my house. Normal times are 2-3am to sleep and about 9 or so to wake up. Even if I have to be up early it is still hard to go to sleep before 2am. From about 18 to my late 20's I fairly consistently just went on 4-5 hrs sleep a night. I don't like doing that any more now, guess time is starting to catch up I feel that 6-7hrs of sleep is required for me now.
If I don't go to sleep just right I will lay in the bed awake for hrs, if I am stressed out all bets are off I may fall asleep fine or I may not.
Since getting married my wife introduced me to Merlot wine ,and it seems to help me to get drowsy faster and I seem to fall asleep faster but. I can not do that every night my body starts to fight it and I just end up getting plastered.
Heavy Metal
02-01-12, 22:36
I too am a night owl. I naturaly will drift to going to bed around 02:30 AM and getting up around 10 if Work did not force a different regimen.
Perhaps. But the grades don't always support it. I always had to schedule classes that were unimportant like PE or subjects where I was really strong like History in the morning. If I tried to understand Algebra at 10am I wouldn't have stood a chance.
Yeah, definitely. I wasn't really being serious. While there may be data supporting it, some of the most driven, intelligent, and successful people I've ever met have been early risers. My old PSG used to say "a real man never lets the sun beat him out of bed." He hated getting up early, but was consistently the first one up and moving. It was almost a sort of personal challenge for him. Discipline.
3rd shift.
It suits me to a T.
Suwannee Tim
02-02-12, 17:07
I am quite the contrary. I will be in bed no later than 9 tonight, 8:30 is better. Tomorrow I will wake up at 5, be at the range at 7:15 and fire my first shot at the earliest allowable minute, 8:00 a.m. It is 6 p.m. right now and I wish it was 8:30 as I have a rare headache. Maybe you are a werewolf Steyr. Or a vampire. I don't know much about them but I have never seen one in the daylight.
arizonaranchman
02-02-12, 18:35
I only sleep 4 or 5 hrs a day, I just can't sleep longer than that. I've worked night shift for most of my 27 yrs on the street, mostly graveyard shift and the rest swing shift. After swing shift I can't get myself to go to bed much before 5 or 5:30 AM. I wake up at 9:30 or 10 AM and start my morning. Sometimes I'll take a nap for an hour or hour and a half around 1 PM right before I leave for work, but that's it.
I love the cool, quiet and darkness of the night. There's little or no traffic on graveyard shift which makes getting around a breeze. In the mornings after I get off graveyard shift I'll run errands on the way home. Once home I'll tinker around til noon or so then go to sleep til 5 or 6 PM.
Belmont31R
02-02-12, 19:25
I am quite the contrary. I will be in bed no later than 9 tonight, 8:30 is better. Tomorrow I will wake up at 5, be at the range at 7:15 and fire my first shot at the earliest allowable minute, 8:00 a.m. It is 6 p.m. right now and I wish it was 8:30 as I have a rare headache. Maybe you are a werewolf Steyr. Or a vampire. I don't know much about them but I have never seen one in the daylight.
I haven't gotten to bed before 11PM unless it was very unusual circumstances in probably 4-5 years.
Suwannee Tim
02-03-12, 20:58
I haven't stayed up even to 11 p.m. in I can't remember when.
3rd shift.
This fits me as well.
ThirdWatcher
02-04-12, 05:43
This fits me as well.
... and me. I've been working it for five years now and my days off are during the week... a lot less crowded when I go to the ville.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.5 Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.