Day 348 - Night Owl

 NIGHT OWL

Prompt - Night Owl : Write about staying up late at night

My teenage years.  Twenties.  Even thirties.  Perhaps, occasionally, forties.  Late nights weren't a problem.  Get up late the next day and I was fine.  But then age starts to have it's impact.  In part that's the obvious gradual physical decline, and consequent loss of recovery powers.  Or indeed staying power, for the simple keeping awake bit becomes harder too.  But also because the idea no longer holds the sense of pleasure it once did.  There needs to be a recovery, and why not spend more time in daylight anyway?  Responsibilities beckon, life is that bit more serious.

So late nights become more infrequent, the body becomes less and less able to adapt to the ones you do have, and whole notion spirals away.  Friends come to dinner and the party breaks up well before one am.  The prospect of a late night show is less the draw that it might once have been.  

I have never really been that much of a morning person.  It's true that I used to get us to the gym for seven in the morning on a regular basis, but that was almost twenty years ago.  We've changed, our lives have changed.  Very much the opposite of early risers, I am rarely in bed before midnight, with the light going out around twelve thirty, and very rarely after twelve.

So I am something of a night owl these days, for the mornings tend to be short, but that still doesn't mean that very late nights, the early hours sort, are on the schedule.  Except for one reason nowadays.  Occasionally I get the chance to watch 'my' NHL team playing live.  But the face off is usually at midnight, or even half past.  Which means, if I'm to watch the whole game, staying up to three and beyond.  That's not all that many hours after my regular bedtime, and way earlier than many of the late nights of my younger days.  But the impact on my body is far greater.  It seems to take about two or three days before I feel totally back to normal again.  

This is odd, for I am not always a great sleeper, and there are still plenty nights when insomnia gets a hold of me.  So my body should be used to going through the day with less sleep than usual.  But the impact of those hockey games goes beyond what you might expect.  So maybe it's about the time you get to bed?  Or the quality of the sleep, for I will either be feeling despondent or euphoric when I get under the duvet.  Watching sport, where the result matters to do, has it's impact on the body too.

I'll still watch the odd game when I can.  But I have to accept that doing so on a regular basis would be a disaster for me.  I really am too old for this kind of thing...