I have a weird habit.
I pick one day a week and I don’t set an alarm.
Every other day of the week, I make myself wake up at 7am and actually get moving. [I know, some of you have to get up way earlier… don’t hate me for sleeping until 7. When I taught school, I was up at 5am and interacting with small people by 7am. I know this is a luxury that won’t last forever.]
[Sidenote: why does telling you I sleep until 7am make me feel insecure when I am about to tell you a whole story about REALLY sleeping in? I’m a complicated human.]
Because I rarely sleep in on Saturdays and we go to the 9am service at Cross Point on Sundays, my weekends aren’t the time when I get to sleep as long as I want. I used to do “No Alarm Monday” because we had college ministry stuff until 10pm-ish on Sundays, but now I go to the chiropractor at 8:30am on Mondays, so that isn’t an option anymore.
[Sidenote #2: Would you pray for my neck and back? Nothing serious, just some continual pain that makes it hard to sit for a long time… which is unfortunate when your job is sitting and writing.]
So each week, I strategically plan a No Alarm Day. This week, it was today. No Alarm Wednesday.
I don’t know why this feels like the most delicious freedom in the world, but it does. And I also don’t know why I insist labeling it. I’m a freak.
Since my working life [that I’m gonna tell you all about tomorrow] has some pretty weird hours, and I’m not doing a 9-5 job, there aren’t really OFF hours either. You know what I mean? So it’s not like a Saturday feels like my day off of work. In fact, I worked/wrote for seven hours last Saturday.
So when I left the Vanderbilt baseball game yesterday [which, some of those boys have started frequenting the blog and I’m all, “uh, I better write a dude-centric post every now and again”] I got home and realized, “TOMORROW IS NO ALARM WEDNESDAY!” And I did a jig.
I still was up by 8:30am. I don’t have the sleeping in skillz of my teenage years where I could snoozle until lunch. I wish I did.
So on average, not on No Alarm Wednesday, I go to bed around 11pm and I’m up at 7am. But today… oh it was nice to never hear the bullhorn that wakes me up most mornings.
Here’s what I’m curious about: on average, what time do you go to bed and what time do you wake up? How many hours of sleep do you need to feel human?