Sleep Woes

Confession: I am a terrible sleeper.

I am a good sleeper in that I can fall asleep absolutely anywhere and stay asleep come hell or high water but actually getting to sleep after a long day OR waking up from such coma is basically impossible.  I don’t know what it is but I can not for the life of me wake up at a simple alarm and the thought of my body “just waking up” is a foreign concept. I could not know less about sleep cycles but I do know that I am incredibly sick of waking up at 5:30 in the morning 2 hours before my alarm is set to go off.  That, coupled with the fact that I hit the snooze button for an hour each morning isn’t exactly helping me.  I’ve tried all sorts of things to break this habit, music instead of a buzzer… which just worked itself into my dream and did not wake me up, having my phone across the room, and of course the additional alarm clock (that I just unplugged while half asleep).

I would love to be the type who just wakes up and feels ready to go.  Quite honestly I’d settle for the type who just wakes up in general.

Insert Pinterest.

I saw this pin floating around the other day and decided to click on it. The website is called Sleepyti.me and you just enter in the time you want to wake up and it gives you times you should fall asleep that allow for you to wake up in between sleep cycles.

I offered to cover a couple extra shifts at job two this week which means back to back 15 hour days and a wacky work schedule to combat my already nonsensical sleep patterns.  Since I basically have nothing to lose I decided to follow (as closely as possible) this sleep calculator this week and so far it seems to be working.  Monday night I managed to fall asleep around 11:05 and felt dare I say refreshed yesterday at my 6:35 wake up time.  Last night I worked until midnight so I waited until the 1:55 am (I know, so late) time to fall asleep and again this morning I felt great.  I was even a half an hour early to work… say whatttt???

This could all be nonsense you guys, I really don’t know.  I mean I could just be more mindful about waking up so it doesn’t really matter what time I’m falling asleep but I don’t even care.  I’ve been trying to trick myself into being a better sleeper for years so even if it’s a straight hoax I’m so happy.

I am also starting to think about bedtime teas. This one from Yogi has been intriguing for a little while now.

This concept seems weird to me as I feel like I drink my tea in the morning (and iced let’s be real) but I’ve heard some people really do well with incorporating them into a nightly routine.

I have really high hopes that some combination of these things will help me fake my way into being a morning person AND maybe even start routinely working out before I go to work for the day.

Any thoughts on sleep cycle calculators?

Any tricks for falling asleep/waking up easier? As you can tell… I’m open to all suggestions 😉

Do you use a bedtime tea?