Thinking about my Five Facts post, there's one fact about me I didn't mention there, and wanted to talk about.
It's about sleep.
Very often, when I tell people about waking up after noon most days, they say something along the lines of "lucky you!"
And then I have to restrain myself. So I just say something along the lines of "well, it's not that great" and let it go.
What I WANT to say is "so, do you usually tell people how fun their disorders are, or just me?"
I have a thing called DSPS. It is, as you can read in the link, a neurological disorder. It is not fun. It is not cool. It makes living a productive life much, much harder.
Most days, by the time I wake up, some government services are no longer available. Certainly keeping an office job is very hard. I had one for a few years, and the physical and emotional toll it had on me was massive.
I have been able to organize my life such that I don't need to wake up in the morning most times. This was not trivial. It didn't just happen. I work from home, both as a freelance translator and writer and as a publisher. I wake up to a pile of emails that my anxiety (see previous post) wants me to run away from.
In times of stress, my hours can fluctuate. I may find myself awake for too long, and crash at basically any time, disrupting my unusual, but at least somewhat regular, hours.
What I would ask is that people stop telling me how lucky I am that I get to wake up late. Recognize that a thing you may find desirable, may actually be quite crappy in someone else's reality.
Credit for the terrific cat photo above to Ranya at Pixabay.