People with different sleep patterns, like the original poster and myself, are not lazy people looking for excuses to sleep in. My grandmother, my mother, and I all have the same off-kilter sleep pattern that doesn't match the rest of the world's.
In order to get along with the rest of you, we have to either get jobs that allow varying hours or go to great lengths to force ourselves into (usually) waking up at unnatural hours. Sometimes we stay up all night. Sometimes we have our family members splash water on us (they learn to do this from a distance...). Quite often, all of our most sincere efforts fail, and our peers are left with the impression that we are unreliable, lazy, or otherwise worth less than other comparabley-equipped individuals.
The head of a local sleep study center told me that when people with odd sleep cycles ask him for a cure, it's like a tall person asking to be made shorter so that he can be a jockey - nature is against you.
Personally, I'm going to try the bed buzz alarm. Right now, if my wife happens to have a difficult morning and falls back to sleep after getting our daughter to school, I'm guaranteed to be late for work. I do have a job which allows flexible hours, but I also have regular morning meetings on some days.
If we were back in our hunting and gathering stage as a society, all of you normal sleepers would be happy to have a few of us freaks who could often stay up late and guard the village from wolves and sleep during the day...
People with different sleep patterns, like the original poster and myself, are not lazy people looking for excuses to sleep in. My grandmother, my mother, and I all have the same off-kilter sleep pattern that doesn't match the rest of the world's. In order to get along with the rest of you, we have to either get jobs that allow varying hours or go to great lengths to force ourselves into (usually) waking up at unnatural hours. Sometimes we stay up all night. Sometimes we have our family members splash water on us (they learn to do this from a distance...). Quite often, all of our most sincere efforts fail, and our peers are left with the impression that we are unreliable, lazy, or otherwise worth less than other comparabley-equipped individuals. The head of a local sleep study center told me that when people with odd sleep cycles ask him for a cure, it's like a tall person asking to be made shorter so that he can be a jockey - nature is against you. Personally, I'm going to try the bed buzz alarm. Right now, if my wife happens to have a difficult morning and falls back to sleep after getting our daughter to school, I'm guaranteed to be late for work. I do have a job which allows flexible hours, but I also have regular morning meetings on some days. If we were back in our hunting and gathering stage as a society, all of you normal sleepers would be happy to have a few of us freaks who could often stay up late and guard the village from wolves and sleep during the day...