I woke up at 6:45 today. A new record. My rhythm is more circadian than ever. I feel like the early hominid must have: up at dawn with the mysterious and life-giving sun trickling into the cave as I fumble about for the leash of my partially domesticated wolf and pour a cup of whatever proto-coffee they surely had. Or I feel like a fitness guru, like one of the beautiful half-naked olympians you sometimes see finishing a sunrise 10K on your way to work; that’s just like me, doing fifteen minutes of gentle yoga guided by an app on my phone.
Truthfully, I am struggling to adapt. I’ve been a bartender on and off for the last few years which lends to a truly disastrous sleep cycle. This summer I worked until 2am most days. It’s hard on the body but you can sleep until you wake up, knowing work doesn’t start until sundown.
My watch has been tracking my sleep cycle and gives a little beep every morning to quantifiably show, with beautiful charts, that I’m exhausted. You slept on your stomach again, it says, your heart rate was too low, and then too high, and this line here says you should feel terrible. It can not be turned off. Have you been smoking again? Your blood oxygen was dismal last night. I find its data very enlightening, which I have to because I paid a lot of money for it.
Apple has a “bedtime” feature which feels patronizing. But hell, why not. I’m gamifying the rest of my sleep cycle anyway. Eve has trouble waking up so she bought an alarm app that won’t shut off until she solves various puzzles and math problems. It chirps loudly at random intervals while she cries What’s 12×13? Please help me, and I tearfully take out my own phone and its calculator app and yell the answers with my head under a pillow. It’s an enriching way to start the day and makes us feel more like a team, couple-wise.
Each studio has one couch, so maybe we’ll put together a scheduling app so students can claim a nap time. I don’t want to be the first one found asleep when studio starts, but someone has to and it might as well be me.