I have had the wackiest sleeping habits for the past year. I can’t quite explain why, and I don’t mind it too much, but it does take some getting used to. I tend to fall asleep early and wake up in the middle of the night raring to go. I’m up out of bed wandering through the kitchen at 4 a.m wondering what the hell I’m up to.
Usually, I make coffee, maybe toast, maybe an egg. Then what? It’s still dark. I always find something to do, and one thing I do is sit and wonder why I’m awake. I’ve made a mental list of possible reasons and have tackled the most obvious ones.
Some of what I list here may be reasons, or they may be excuses, or they may be the products of an over-active imagination, which doubles as also one of the excuses.
Issue one: I fall asleep early. I rarely make it past 9 p.m. and I’m zonked out in my big, cushy recliner chair. My excuse: I can’t find anything good to watch on television.
Susan and I do separate things and have separate interests being retired together, but we always converge around the television for a few hours of broadcast entertainment. I like movies, I’m not much for weekly TV shows, and I feel too old and inundated to watch documentaries.
If I’m given the remote, I scroll endlessly, in a blur, rejecting hundreds and hundreds of viewing options, grumbling all the time that there’s nothing to watch. Then I had the remote to Susan. She has a completely different mindset. She finds something that interests her in the first row. In no time, we are watching something. If it doesn’t click with me, I zone out and fall asleep.
Susan says that is bull pie. She says I fall asleep during movies I select, during fight scenes, chase scenes, and plot zeniths. She suggests I take a daily nap. That’s something I’ve never done and never missed. I don’t do naps. For me it would feel like waiting for the bus. When I do nap, I stay up later and still wake up at 3:26 a.m.
Issue 2: I wake up with the little hand on the three every night. A lot of that wakeup has to do with the nightly pee. It’s as regular as sleep itself. I get several good hours. Then it starts. First my dream shuts down. My blissful nether thoughts cease, and I feel my body. I’m awake. I crack open my eyes. I have no bodily urge nudging me yet, but I know it’s coming. I rise for the bathroom and meet the need halfway. That’s thinking ahead.
Back in bed I’m comfortable. That’s why I don’t go back to sleep. That’s my second excuse. Why should I? I’m retired. I got nowhere to be. I am not mentally grinding over problems or fretting over concerns. I’m cool.
I’m not eager for dawn. I shuffle through to the softest, coolest pillow, place it on top, fluff the blankets, and recline. La, de, do, da, day.
As I lie there in the dark, I get to pick what I want to think about, and I try to pick something fun, like future vacation ideas, or where in the Bay Area would I take various friends and family if they came to visit, or new garage projects, or plot twists to unwritten novels, or column topics.
In a few hours I rise and make coffee for the two of us and our day begins.
Sometimes I don’t daydream. Some mornings I don’t care what the experts say, I pick up my phone and check Twitter, Reddit, Flipboard, Facebook, Buzzfeed, CNBC, Chive, and then I play Zynga poker until dawn.
I have three books with bookmarks by my bed and a cool narrow-beam gooseneck floor reading lamp from IKEA that I can bend to illuminate just my book. I recently finished “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline. It was a fantastic read, both nostalgic of the 1980s and futuristic. I read it fast because I wanted to see the movie. It too was fantastic and wonderfully different from the book. I also finished “Beat the Reaper” by Josh Bazell, and “Noir” by Christopher Moore is soon to be released and delivered.
So, all told, I don’t think I actually have a sleep problem. By going to bed super early, I cut out a lot of that non-productive, snack-food munching, brainless entertainment time in front of the boob tube, and by waking up super early I get to enjoy a few hours of quiet me time with my thoughts and pastimes.
What I will spend some future time contemplating during those dark wee hours is how I can convert some of that me time, which is now mostly a time for input, learning, and discerning, into a time of output.
In other words, can I jump out of bed at three in the morning and start fixing something? We want to paint all the walls. I could roll out drop cloths, do one wall, and clean up the mess before Susan wakes up. She could be the shoemaker, and I would be the elf.

Steve Gibbs is a retired Benicia High School teacher who has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

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