Being a night owl is natural

Being a night owl often comes with the comments: "you should just go to bed earlier", "get up at consistent times every day", "have you tried melatonin?", "you need better sleep hygiene, eg, no screens and heavy meals before bed", and many more. However, if you are like me you have already tried all of these things and you still naturally gravitate towards being more alert at night, and sleepy during the day. 

I don't think all humans are meant to be diurnal though. Think about it, way back when we lived out in the open, did everyone sleep at the time? I doubt it, I bet some people stayed awake during the night time to keep watch over the tribe from predatory animals and other tribes attacking. Also, who would ensure the fire stays alight in the middle of winter? There surely had to be a diverse range of waking hours, just as there is a diverse range in skills and ways of thinking. 

Likewise, to wake/sleep hours, the term "neurodiverse" is not a new concept. If everyone thought the same way, society would never progress. However, that is a bit of a tangent, so lets stick to the subject of being nocturnal. 

For me, in my mid thirties, I have struggled my entire life with trying to fit into the waking hours of society. It leaves me constantly fatigued, stressed, and often quite depressed with the feeling that "I will never be good enough". However, I have completed a Bachelor's degree, a Master's degree, and I have almost completed my PhD. All of these, I found myself to be most productive during the night time. Now I don't mean in the afternoon, I mean after 9 pm at night, when the sun has well and truly set.

Throughout all of my degrees, I have tried to be diurnal, forcing myself to fit in as to attend classes, exams, meetings, and conferences. For a short period of time , sure I can do this, however, on weekends and after a few weeks at most I am completely burnt out and unable to function. On weekends I will sleep for about 12 hours, sleeping thought multiple alarms and people trying to wake me. More recently, I had to take a 3 month leave of absence from my PhD in order to be able to continue with it. It is absolutely exhausting doing what does not come naturally to your own body.

When covid and lockdowns occurred, I was in my element. After the first few weeks of being sad about having events cancelled, and not being able to go to the gym, I quickly adjusted, and I was in my element. I was awake at night and asleep in the day. I didn't sleep through the entire day, I was up for some of the afternoon, so I still enjoyed going outside for local bushwalks, and even had the motivation to do yoga by myself every single day! I have no motivation to exercise at all by myself when I have to be diurnal all the time, therefore I need to pay money for a gym membership, even though I love doing yoga and pilates. 

Right now, in the final (hopefully) month before I submit my PhD thesis, I am working anywhere from 9 pm until 7pm, and getting more done in one night than I have been able to do in an entire week for the past couple of years of having to be diurnal. My mental health has significantly improved, and so have my migraine symptoms. I actually see hope for myself completing this soon, unlike the past 6 -7 months when every time I have a glimpse at hope, it disappears just as quick as it arrives. 

My work environment is a influencing factor, yes, however, it is not the main driver. Whether I'm at the office, at the library, at home, or at a friends place, my most productive hours are late at night. Thankfully, one of my local library's is trialling being accessible for 24hrs, so lately I've been working here where it is warm, especially since my university campus is an hours drive away (in good traffic) which means I don't want to stay there too late. 

For all the other 'night owls' out there have you havd similar experiances to me? Has being awake at "ungodly hours" as they say helped you achieve things in life?

Secondly, for all the early birds or larks, please stop judging us because we operate differently to you. I have faced so much persecution from peers just because I can't focus on anything in the morning, and sometimes even the afternoon. I want you to imagine trying to concentrate on a project at midnight, could you do it and work to the best of your ability?

Lastly, for everyone else in between, some might say "the world is built for you", but I think you face similar problems to the rest of us, you have your peak times, and you have your low times, accept it.

Remember not all worms are out in the morning!

Wow, Granny Smith apples last a long time

So I got a bunch of granny smith apples just before Christmas so my brother could make an apple pie. He didn't use them all and won't eat them or use them for anything else since. I had a look in the fridge and there's still a couple left today (March). I tried one and it is still crispy, and nice tasting! They've been stored in the crisper of the fridge, so cool and dark most of them time, but still outlasting any other apple variety I have bought! 

I suppose I should give an update on everything else. 

My Spain trip was finally fully approved last week. Keep in mind that the trip is in less than 2 weeks from now. 

Now the admin is done I can finally actually work on my research and data analysis! I have yet to begin putting a poster together. I've been wrapping up a few loose ends with data and making some figures to explore what secrets it may reveal to me. Unfortunately, today R has decided to be extra slow so I've not been feeling overly productive.

Also, I think I experienced sleep paralysis for the first time this morning. I woke up multiple times and I could barely keep my eyes open or move, so I ended up just going back to sleep until I woke up being able to open my eyes properly. Thankfully, it was fairly mild in symptoms, but if I had to go into the office and wasn't able to work from home I would have been majorly screwed. Yay, for sleep disorders!

Even now, it's 21:40 (9:40 pm) and I'm still working to try and catch up for the messed up start to the day I had. However, another thing about me is that I don't usually function well in the mornings anyway, and am naturally a night owl. Regardless of sleep hygiene practices, medications, melotonin supplements and forcing myself to get up early and go to bed early. My natural circadian rhythm is functional when the sun is down, and dead when the sun is up.  

If you go back to when human ancestors lived in tribes, it makes sense that some people are nocturnal. If everyone was on the same sleeping pattern , that would mean there would be no body to keep the tribe safe at night. I just wished this concept was more accepted in the workplace. Since it is not I have to force myself to try and work at a low efficiency in the day time and then when I really need to get things done stay up at night to be productive, which then in turn makes everything harder the next day and is a vicious cycle of me burning out trying to keep up with society.

Gee, this post went down hill, maybe I should go back to apples....

Unpaid sabbaticals

I have a lot coming up in the next few months. I've applied for a leave of absence for April-June, no word yet but I am already planning as if it has been accepted. I'm calling it an unpaid sabbatical.

Before then I would like to get in another field trip and start on some new measurements and finish up some of the previous ones. I did some practice runs with two of my species that grow in the Blue Mountains and it looks like I will need to do all of the measurements immediately in the field, and that they will take a few hours! I'm hoping to create some stomatal closure curves, assuming my species don't fuse their stomata shut as soon as I harvest a branch. 

I got Chat GPT to summarise what I'm looking at in layman's terms because I am lazy and forget most people don't know what stomata are:

"A stomatal closure curve is a graph that shows how plant leaf openings, called stomata, respond to changes in water availability. It demonstrates how tightly the stomata close at different levels of water supply. Stomatal conductance, which measures how gases pass through the stomata, decreases as the stomata close in response to lower water availability, reflected in the curve. This curve helps researchers understand how plants regulate water loss through transpiration under varying environmental conditions."

Prior to my break I am also hoping to get to Adelaide to finally see The Dark Room live. I started following Robbotron on Twitch during covid. He and a few other people really helped me and kept me going during that time, and the communities were also great and oh-so wholesome, but not in a sickening way, in a totally awesome way that I could relate to. Here are a few other important communities I was a part of: RandomBritishDude, MitchBruzzese, RustyQuill (specifically Mike and Anil), and an honorable mention to Monkeeeyboi whom I found through RandomBritishDude. If you know these people or clicked on the hyperlinks you may have noticed they are all UK citizens, except for Mitch who is an Aussie. Robbotron is also Aussie, but resides in the UK.  As you might have guessed I was living my best life as a nocturnal during lockdown :)

Anyway, I will also be starting a 10-week DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) program, that will conclude about halfway through my sabbatical. My uni counselor got me on to it and is part of organising it. She has been bringing it up for a little while now, and my psychologist has mentioned it and group therapies a couple of times too. So when she offered me a spot in the program, I pretty much jumped on it. I am a bit nervous of course, group therapy - "what the hell? I hate humans", but I am also excited and hoping it will help me to function better. 

I will not only be taking a sabbatical from my PhD though, but also my psychologist. We discussed it today, it came up naturally and we were both kind of on the same page (or close enough). Since I'm doing this course and will be receiving support from it I should focus on that, and then soon after that ends my psychologist is going overseas for a bit. So essentially we won't see each other for about 6 months. This saddens me as I enjoy talking with them, however, talking to them today it looks like we have been having similar thoughts about things and that a break could benefit us. When we do meet up again we will reassess the situation and see if I will even need their continued support or if the counsellors through uni will be enough. 

So overall these next few months could turn out to be quite interesting and potentially life-changing? It's scary but exciting. I'm just so confused about some things, and unhappy or apathetic about others. I'm really hoping for a bit more clarity on things and to be able to acknowledge and express myself better. Yes, I'm doing this all to better my life, but it could also lead to big challenging changes in my life. These changes are going to affect those around me, and that's what scares me most,  upsetting other people.  

To end on a different note (purposeful pun) recently Sheldon Riley's Eurovison song "Not the same" has really resonated with me and made me feel stronger. I could always somewhat relate, and of course, I love his voice, but only recently has it really gone deep for me. I just love Eurovision so much, I get to discover so many new styles of music and artists and get all the feels! Here is their performance at the Eurovision finals, enjoy!