Sleep Fail

I think my circadian rhythms hate me.  I’ve sworn for most of my adult (and quasi-adult) life, that I was fundamentally nocturnal.  I would try really hard to conform to a typical schedule.  But I could never consistently get to sleep before midnight, and usually I would stay up until at least two or three.  Which put my typical waking hour somewhere around ten.  Some nights I wouldn’t sleep at all.  I’ve been pretty good about maintaining a fairly flexible schedule, so that could more or less work for me most of the time.

But I’m starting a new third-shiftish job in a couple weeks, and I’m trying to segue into my new schedule.  I’ll be working from 7p to 3/4a, so I figure I’ll end up sleeping from about 6a to 2p.  So I’ve been moving my bedtime back by an hour or so.  But my inner alarm clock is apparently just cantankerous.  For the past three days I’ve gotten less than six hours of sleep.  Last night I got less than four!  I even hung a blanket over the window to block the light.  But at 8:30a (a time I would ordinarily have to wage a valiant battle to wake at) *ding!*  My inner clock yells “Up and at ‘em!  Nuts, nuts get ‘em!”  Pointless to even try and sleep after all that hooplah…

Apparently my brain has figured out I have no plans of having children, so it’s devising its own nefarious ways to make my life misrable…

xx% Geek and xx% Eccentric

I think I need to re-evaluate my eccentricity percentage.  I’m thinking maybe each criteria should have a five point scale (hardly, some, quite a bit, very much, and totally, say…).  And the first five should probably get some sort of extra-weighting.  Hmmmm…  I think I should have paid more attention in Intro to Statistics in college, and I’d probably have a better idea of how to go about doing that…

And at some point I guess I’ll delve into the specifics of how I fit into each criteria.  But I have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to come out of this thing as “quirky” and not “eccentric”.  On the other hand, all this pointless introspection could lead to a fun lil’ quiz on t’okc where I also like to roam.

73.3% Eccentric!

Came across a good book for my reading list: Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness by David Weeks and Jamie James.  Rather self-explanatory title.  But the nifty bit is that they cooked up a list of fifteen typical traits of an Eccentric Person (He’s Eccentric, I tell you! Eccentric!).  Nine of them I think I rather unarguably qualify as possessing, four of them are about half true for me, and and only two of them don’t apply whatsoever.  That’s functionally eleven out of fifteen, or 73.3% eccentric.  What fun!

The list in descending order of importance:

• Nonconforming
• Creative
• Strongly motivated by curiosity
• Idealistic: wants to make the world a better place, and the people in it happier
• Happily obsessed with one or more hobbies (usually five or six)
• Aware from early childhood that he is different
• Intelligent
• Opinionated and Outspoken, convinced that he is right and that the rest of the world is out of step
• Noncompetitive, not in need of reinforcement or reassurance from society
• Unusual in his eating habits and living arrangements
• Not particularly interested in the opinions or company of other people
• Possessed of a mischievous sense of humour
• Single
• Usually the eldest or only child
• Bad speller