Body clock

Late nights, dreams as defrag, déjà vu, early writing

I’m an early bird whose friends are mostly night owls, and while I can stay up late if I need to, I’m grateful for how accommodating my more awake friends can be. For example, when I stay with my friend Jess it’s a given that I’ll go and sleep in her bed a full three hours before she joins me, with maybe a brief waking up to get a drink of water as she’s winding down, sleepy passing ships in the kitchen. And this tenderness in our routine makes me happy, like we’re an old married couple rather than two close friends.

Because I’m a bad sleeper as well as an early waker, I now have a tracker that gives me a neat little report each morning – a ring beloved of tech bros, which monitors a bewildering array of my functions and which has earned me the unsexy nickname Bilbo. Turns out there’s such a thing as too much information. Temperatures, fluctuations of stress and repose, sleep apportioned into different kinds. The tracker tells me I don’t get enough REM sleep, which is funny, because I feel every night is full of dreaming. Perhaps I’m only skating on the surface of it. If I had enough of the right kind of sleep, I still might dream but not remember what happens, keep them buried in whatever psychological vault they belong in.