To Sleep, or Not to Sleep?

Jet lag: a concept known to all, and experienced by most international travelers. I personally haven’t experienced any real form of jet lag since I was a little kid (9 to be specific) when I traveled to the Philippines with my family. Back then my little kid circadian rhythm did its novel best to keep me awake after a grueling 36 hours of travel, but ultimately succumbed when I promptly passed out just after dinner. 

More than 11 years later, I am much more aware of the effects of jet lag that I’m going to be facing in a few days, and will attempt to preemptively adjust my sleeping schedule so as to have a normal sleep pattern when I arrive. 

Some of you may be saying, "well, England is only 6 hours ahead of Austen’s timezone, that’s barely anything to adjust to really". Easier said than done, friends, family, and beyond. Easier said than done. While it’s true, Greenwich Mean Time is only 6 hours ahead of Central Standard Time, however, Austen Summer Time (AST) is about 6 hours behind Central Standard Time. During the school year, I am pretty diligent about getting a solid 8-9 hours of sleep each night and going to bed around the same time each day. In the summer, however, I tend to revert to a different, personal time zone, Austen Summer Time, in which I tend to go to sleep around 3-4am and wake up around 12-1pm. The transition into Austen Summer Time happens gradually, over the course of a few weeks, but is rather hard to transition out of suddenly. 

Consequently, at this very moment, I am operating at around a 12 hour time difference in comparison to England. And no matter how hard I try, my body doesn’t want me to wake up at 8am after falling asleep at 4am, and my body just can’t fall asleep at 11pm after waking up at 1pm. It's a tough cycle to break. 

My ingenious (and perhaps slightly ridiculous) solution: tonight I will not sleep! Seeing as I cannot adjust in a conventional manner to my upcoming encounter with jet lag, I shall of course try the unconventional. Today, I didn’t wake up until 1pm, so if I just stay up all night, I’ll be tired enough to fall asleep at 8pm (that'll be 31 straight hours of wakefulness, hopefully without any naps along the way, but who knows). Then, after going to sleep at 8pm, I’ll be able to wake up at 3 or 4am, and I will be all set and ready to go and kick jet-lag in the butt! You may think this to be a strange and perhaps unadvised method, but, when it comes to the eternal question: "to sleep, or not to sleep", my answer is an enthusiastic “Not!” (at least for tonight). 

(Be advised, I do actually recommend a healthy and regular amount of sleep each and every night, I don’t actually recommend that anyone not sleep unless it is absolutely unavoidable!)