Our bodies, our tormentors

Sitting on the toilet at 03:39 reading this. So true.

If we were freed from the needs of a specific schedule, we would take this as signals of when your body wants to wake up and follow a polyphasic sleep schedule. If you're waking up at 3AM all the time, that's a signal your body wants to get up. If you're comfortable sleeping at 7AM, that's a signal that your body wants to sleep. So you would wake up at 3AM and do something for a few hours, then go back to sleep. Overall sleep time ends up the same, though there are some polyphasic schedules out there where you can theoretically sleep as little as 2 hours a day. They are extremely regimented on the schedule.

But good luck doing any of that while having a regular job.

I'm currently not working, not even job searching, just... taking December off it all. So naturally I'm allowing myself to sleep in as much as I want. I'm finding myself falling asleep around 1:30am and sleeping through to 11am, only waking due to the crushing guilt of 'wasting the day'. I could probably go for another 2 hours or more. It's all making me realize that humanity is doing the human condition dirty - we should sleep as much as we need to sleep, not be forced to grind at some mediocre task for 8 hours after under-sleeping.

ymmv but I found walking around, having some water, and doing something menial task (cleaning up the room or dishes) and actively avoiding screens usually leads me to feel sleepy after 15-30 minutes..

Humans aren't really designed for full 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep (nor 16 hours of full wakefulness but I'm fortunate enough that I can take naps in the afternoon) so don't be hard on yourself if one happens to wake up in the middle of the night. It's natural (like afternoon naps).The biggest issue is screens/activities that are designed to keep you alert and a societal lifestyle that demands a strict wake-sleep cycle.

when it’s time to wake up I’m usually in a stupidly deep sleep basically in dream land and not wanting to leave kinda deep sleep.

Just as a sort of tangent to this - it used to be normal (apparently all over the world) for people to wake up after a few hours, get up and do stuff for a while, then go back to bed. Basically, there were 2 sleep periods each night.

BBC has a rather long and overly detailed article about it: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep

Maybe all of us waking up at 2:00 or 3:00 is a remnant of that?

I miss feeling like this so much! for years I have back pain everytime i lay down and as time passes it gets worst so I'm never confortable in the mornings. My body is so crazy that I can do anything without pain, even exercise, I have no pain at all...except if I lay down and relax. Fuck my body

I'm running on a single hour of sleep. Thank God I am working from home today because I'm SUFFERING. and of course a day that's supposed to be slow is the day we get absolutely slammed with stuff. I can't handle this. Might cry on my lunch tbh

If you've not got one, I would highly recommend getting an air quality meter.

I had this issue last night, awake randomly at 2-3am. When I checked, the air quality was terrible. (It's bespoke scale put it at 10 out of 100) after opening a window and letting it improve, I happily drifted back off.

It turned out I didn't wake up randomly, I was dragged awake from a light sleep due to the air quality plummeting. It won't apply to everyone, but it's worth checking if it's a common problem.

(For reference, 10% air was CO2 of 2360ppm, and VOCs at 5000ppm with 80% humidity. Fresh air is CO2<500, VOCs<100)

This time of year it might be random bouts of 3AM fireworks.