Wake-up call!

Today I woke up right when I was supposed to start work, flung on my clothes and went out of my door (luckily, I have about a three meter commute). Yesterday, I overslept three and a half hours. Something must be done.

I have tried many times during the years to find a good method of waking me up. I have set my alarm really loud, right by my head – this makes me really mad, but doesn’t keep me from going back to sleep. I have hid the alarm, a new place every night. I’ve set it a few minutes early, turned my light on, and tried to stare at the light so I would wake up.

I’ve had my parents come in and tell me to get up. I’ve tried going to bed and waking up at exactly the same time each day, to get my body into the right rhythm. (My body does have a rhythm, the problem is it’s set a few hours later than most people’s, and it REFUSES to change.)

I’ve tried singing at the top of my lungs whatever song comes into my head first – don’t worry, the room I had then was almost soundproof! I’ve held one of my arms up in the air, on the theory that one can’t sleep while doing that. I can.

I’ve tried thinking happy and excited thoughts about the day. (”Oh yay, another fun day of school! And it’s raining, again! That means, umm… I won’t have to water the grass! Oh boy!”) Didn’t work. I sat on the floor, I walked around the room, I jumped up and down.

What I finally got to work – more or less – was hiding my alarm in the other room, so maybe 20 meters away. The other room was very messy and things were moved around a lot, so you never knew exactly when you were going to bump into something. I had to go over there, through an obstacle course – and in pitch dark, as you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face without the light on in that room.

That woke even me up, although I still had to make myself sit – in the middle of the hard floor – for about a half an hour with my alarm snooze going every five minutes before I could trust myself to not fall asleep again. I also had to keep moving where I put my alarm.

Now that I’ve moved, I’m in a room where it isn’t dark, I can’t be noisy, and there isn’t hardly any point in putting the alarm across the room as I can be there and back in two steps. I do have it across the room and on a five minute snooze, but that isn’t enough. Right now I’m almost considering putting my alarm outside my window – my window isn’t very high off the ground – so I then have to climb out the window to get my alarm and turn it off. I think that would do the job, but it is rather… eccentric?

Suggestions? Or do you know of anyone who has problems waking up, who might have an idea? Because honestly.

~ av christa89 på maj 7, 2009 - 23:22.