Now that the initial high of getting a new job has passed, I have to make adjustments to my lifestyle in order to compensate for the changes said job will bring. The most important of these being my sleeping pattern.
Here's my sleeping schedule as of this week:
11:30 pm: Look at clock, tell myself I should go to sleep.
11:30 pm-1:30 am: Brush teeth, floss, and then put off sleep putz around the Internet for two hours.1:31 am: Look at the clock, say "Holy shit it's late!" to myself, and try to go to sleep.
1:32 am-2:30am: Be kept awake by my brain which will not stop thinking about zombie-attack emergency plans, sex, my future, etc.
8:30 am: Wake up to the sound of phone vibrating in alarm clock mode.
8:31 am: Turn off alarm, set it for 8:35 am (it's like a multi-process snooze button).
8:35 am: Wake up again. Turn off phone. Turn on computer.
8:35-8:40 am: Check e-mail. (It mostly ends up being comment spam notifications for the OC blog.) Check news sites, make sure the world hasn't exploded overnight.
8:40 am-9:05 am: Take shower, shave, dress.
9:05 am-9:25 am: Eat, pack lunch, brush teeth, auto-fill iPod shuffle.
9:30 am: Realize I should have been in the car about five minutes ago instead of reading webcomics.
And repeat.
So now that I'm going to need to be at my job at 9:00 am, instead of the 10-ish am of my intern months, I'm going to have to wake up a whole hour earlier. I haven't woken up at 7:30 am since I had 8:00 am Grammar for Journalists class back at the UO.
Of course, my teaching assistant friend scoffs at my horror toward my new wakey time. She has to be at her school by 7:30 am, which requires waking up at some ungodly hour (by my standards).
Things could be a lot worse, but I'm preparing as much as I can streamline my waking process and maximize my sleeping time. Through Lifehacker, I found a few helpful tips on shaking off my sleepiness, and I'm timing my showers so I can cut them down from an obscene 10-15 minutes to 5-10 (and I definitely have to stop just standing there soaking in the steamy water for five minutes in a zombie-like state). The simplest, but also most important change of all: I just need to go to sleep earlier.
The great anti-somnolent experiment begins this Sunday. Am I doomed to failure and repeated snooze button hits, or will I conquer the dawn, cup of steaming coffee in hand? We shall see dear reader, we shall see.