Re: Flushie comrades!
Actually over the years, I've studied all my cycles and how I feel when I wake during them. Waking anytime at 7:30 is A okay with my body. The trouble is that I DON'T feel good any of the time because I must get up at 6:30 every day and the same thing happens: Initially, I want to kill myself : ) - but by about 7 I'm fine and go to work - right at around 10 am I feel sleepy and crappy most of the rest of the day. Get home at 5 and am listeless, have to force myself to do anything. Feel like napping, if I do, I wake up 30 mins. later in the worst possible mood, so I try not to nap. By about 8:30 PM, my body perks up, my mind perks up and I'm ready for anything, but this is when I want to be winding down. I do go to bed at 11 or 11:30 and I do indeed sleep but it's always a very light sleep and I feel like crap all over again the next day.
On the other hand, the few times our work times change and I don't have to get up until 7:30 or 8, all is fixed. In my optimum schedule, I go to bed at 1 or 2 am and awake at 8 or 9, but if I'm on this one, I can literally go to bed at 4 or 5 am and get up at 9 and be fine all day. I can do this for 3 or 4 days before I need more than 4-5 hours of sleep. And if I get more than 7 or 8 hours, I feel horrible.
I'm seriously and literally at the point where I'm considering changing jobs just so I can not awake so early because this schedule works so horribly for me that I feel I'm waisting all my evenings doing nothing because I'm so listless.
My own conclusion is that somehow, it's not so much the amount of sleep I get, but the type of sleep and my body doesn't go into the important, deeper stages of sleep until early morning, because it just takes that one hour after 6:30 or 7 to change everything.
Anyway, interesting to talk about!