Right now my schedule is fully 12 hours rotated from normal. I went to sleep at about 8 AM this morning, and got up this evening. This happens to me pretty often. My body really seems to prefer being awake during the late-night hours. I am much more productive late at night, and for that reason I have been loath to force myself into a “normal” schedule. Sure, it would make it easier to hold down a job and get practical things done, that I don’t deny. I’m not sure it’s even possible for me to have a normal sleep cycle, though, so I figure I may as well take advantage of these hours when I’m so productive.

Johannes stayed up all night tonight, sort of skipping a day. We got up late on Saturday, went out to eat and to a movie. After we got home, he sat down in the recliner with the computer on his lap and got majorly absorbed in a project, hardly moving for the next 7 hours. Around 7 AM, I asked him if he was planning on going to sleep. He decided not to, and while I went to bed, he stayed up all day programming. He used to do that sort of thing a lot when he was in college, to a great extent to get to talk to me online. Now that he has a job, he doesn’t do it much anymore, but I get the idea that he does still enjoy it a bit. I know that he’s productive in the wee hours just like I am.

Well, Johannes’s family called repeatedly today (Sunday) while I was asleep. I didn’t hear the phone, since I’ve got things set up so we won’t be disturbed by its ringing while we sleep. (I’m one of those Luddites who believe the phone exists for my convenience, not that of others.) They called on the land line, Johannes’s cell, and my cell, and didn’t get an answer on any of them. Johannes said that he doesn’t like to talk to people on the phone when he hasn’t slept for 24 hours, and he refuses to talk to anyone on the phone when he hasn’t eaten for 12 hours (a very good policy, considering his low-blood-sugar-bitchiness issues!). I don’t know what messages got left on Johannes’s mobile, and Elias, Johannes’s little brother, hadn’t left a message on the land line when he called there. But Elisabeth left a message on my mobile, saying something like “Well, I guess you’ve slept away the Sunday, so it’s too late to get to do anything together.” Hmm, we hadn’t had anything planned.

Johannes’s family has a totally different relationship to time than I do, and that statement really outlines the difference in bold. I don’t know if it’s just Johannes’s family, or if it’s more a generally Norwegian thing–probably a little bit of both. It’s interesting to think about a statement like “sleeping away the Sunday” in terms of framing (à la George Lakoff). It implies that certain hours of the day are the “real” Sunday, the hours that count. So, it doesn’t matter if you were awake and working your ass off from midnight ’til 8 AM; if you slept from 8 AM ’til 5 PM, you “wasted” the day. Lakoff talked quite a bit about the “time is money” ICM (idealized cognitive model) in “Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things“, and I think the idea of sleeping away the day fits this ICM, however peripherally.

I’m not sure if I buy into this ICM. I know I don’t believe that certain hours of the day are more valuable than others. My own experience belies that idea. I don’t disagree that it’s easier to be social and get practical stuff done–in Norway, at least–if you’re awake during the daylight hours. But I run into this kind of thinking so often in this country. It’s so hard to be different here, and this is just another example of why. Society itself is structured for everyone to be awake at the same time and sleep at the same time. There are no 24-hour stores except for a few convenience stores, and those are almost all in the center of the city (where we live now, thank God!). The vast majority of grocery stores close at 9 on weekdays and 6 on weekends. The other stores are even worse, with many closing as early as 2 PM on Saturdays. Nothing but the convenience stores are open on Sundays. Christ, I’d hate to go on a road trip in this country! I remember when the government finally legislated that stores could be open on Sundays. That didn’t last long. I remember when one grocery store close to here decided to stay open ’til 10 PM. I went up there one day to shop a little after 9 not too long after that to find that they’d closed. Apparently there just hadn’t been enough customers that late at night to justify keeping the store open another hour. Bah. So, it’s not just that the opening hours are legislated–people here just aren’t night-owls, I guess. Or, perhaps more likely, the night-owls that are here have been taught by society to look upon their schedules as freakish and irresponsible, and thus not worthy of accommodation by society. If friggin’ Norman, OK, population 72,000, can keep several all-night restaurants and stores open, then friggin Oslo, Norway, population 500,000 ought to be able to, too.

And none of this even touches on the fact that my husband works his ass off during the week. He’s constantly sleep deprived because, like me, he’s most productive later in the day. His job requires him to get up and go to work early in the morning, so he does, but he then either works late at night or stays out networking. He’s good at his job, precisely because he spends so much time outside of work networking and learning. As much as I’d like for him not to have to be sleep deprived, I’d never want him to have to give up his most productive hours for sleep. And he doesn’t. It pisses me off that there seems to be no way for people like him to be accommodated by this society. He suffers for it. He gets on average 6 hours of sleep per night on work nights, often considerably less. So more power to him if he wants to sleep away his Sundays! He deserves at least that much.

My friend Joy pointed out to me that the comments weren’t working. Turned out that when Johannes installed a security-code checker to thwart comment spam, that affected all the blogs on this server. Nice. Anyway, the problem is fixed now. The only problem is that yes, now you have to enter a security code to post a comment. Sorry about the trouble.

…is super cool! It has little lessons and quizzes afterwards, and if you do well on the quizzes you can collect points and get stuff. Quick, easy, and fun–check it out!