Night Owl

Since I was a teenager, I’ve almost exclusively been a natural night owl. I operate best on a night shift schedule. Waking up early in the morning for school was the biggest pain for me, especially when I’d go to sleep in the A.M’s more often than not.

There’s a lot of research out there about the evolutionary reasons of why night owls exist in the first place, but whatever the truth is on that, one thing is for sure, I definitely feel a natural predilection for being awake at night time. Unfortunately, the reality of our current school-work paradigm makes it harder for night owls to thrive and operate optimally.

There’s certainly a benefit to waking up early in the morning and it works for some people. At various times in my life, I operated on an early bird schedule and it worked fairly well if I intentionally structured my day in a way to fit it. Waking up and feeling the glow of the sunrise is an incomparable feeling that I feel night owls miss out on, more often than not. As someone who loves going on walks around the lake near my home, waking up early certainly maximizes that experience.

When I sleep purely based on my own circadian rhythm, I find I drift towards being a night owl, no matter what. Perhaps, the modern invention of electricity, and better yet, the invention of convenient and accessible technological devices, has made it much easier to operate and function late at night than ever before in human history. My experience with being a night owl is certainly something I’ll come back to, but for now, thanks for listening, and have a nice night, y’all.

Signing off,

Henry