I’ve realized lately that I love sleeping and being awake in equal measures. It’s the transitions that I have trouble with.

I am definitely NOT a morning person, and dragging myself out of bed each day is a real struggle. When I don’t have to be up by a certain time, I’ve been known to dawdle under the covers, not really asleep but not yet fully alert, for an hour or more. If there happens to be a book by my bedside, I may not fully emerge all morning.

However, once I’m up, I’m up. At that point, getting me to go to bed is nearly impossible. Every night, I’ll find myself looking at the clock as the minutes count down to midnight, then tick upward and upward beyond. I know full well I have things to do the next day and should be thinking about saying goodnight, but I can’t quite bring myself to it. In fact, I often find myself at the point where I’m nearly too exhausted to even crawl into bed, and I’ll admit that on more than a few occasions, I’ve passed out on the sofa or even at my computer desk chair. And if I wake up and realize that I’m not in my bed, more often than not, I won’t move there. It’s as if a part of me is still insisting that I have things I need to do before retiring and the energy with which to do them.

I’m not sure why I do this to myself. I’ve never been entirely comfortable with change. Maybe that includes changes in consciousness. Whatever the reason, I do wish I’d get better at it. It’s resulted in an ever-changing, completely unreliable sleep schedule, and my friends are getting tired of not knowing when it’s safe to call.