I’m up later than i planned to be, was playing quizzes online, and after climbing into bed amd getting out my tablet to waste more time in front of a screen i got a sudden wave of nostalgia, comfort and joy washing over me and thought "huh, i guess that’s why i alwaya used to push my bedtime to its limits!
But i haven’t gotten that feeling for the last few dozen times i stayed up too late. Just felt tired.
Wondering how it is for other people - what’s your relationship with late nights?
My sleep schedule is notoriously messy (e.g. 3AM here, and I’m translating stuff), so it neither drains me nor it gives me dopamine. But it helps me a wee bit because of the silence, I guess.
Late nights are necessary for teens, because adults control their entire daytime. Night is when they have privacy to engage in what they actually enjoy doing. As an adult, you can do that during the daytime, so you don’t need to exhaust yourself.
nah, teens have so much more free-time then adults they do it in the daytime too.
Until you have children yourself, that is
Well that’s a helpful perspective. I guess i just feel like i don’t have enough time in the day to do everything i want - maybe qnother consequence of ADHD
I always used to enjoy staying up late too, but the older I get, the more tired I become around my regular bedtime.
It’s not just sleepiness, but genuine exhaustion that I cannot ignore that leads to awful symptoms like paranoia, eye strain, derealisation or anxiety. I just physically can’t stay awake longer.
A very complicated and toxic relationship.
The other night I stayed up until 4am. Why? Something meaningless drew me in and kept me going until I realized “holy shit, it’s morning!”.Sleeping had its own thing. Don’t force it or it rebels against you.
Years of staying up late to finish projects when i was a student in design school wired my brain to be creative between 10pm and 1am
If feels great because i enjoy having my brain explore new ideas, but also i kind of wish i had a more “normal” schedule
Ah I actually don’t want that for myself. At the moment i find that i end up doing producive work at 10pm-2 am and i hate it, so i’ll train myself to never be up this late again if that’s something that happens
It depends. Do you need to get up for work before 6am? You may get a quick hit doing whatever you’re doing while staying up late, but you’ll definitely pay for it and it becomes unsustainable.
Late nights just happen to me. But I’ll read, or do something at the computer, or doom-scroll, or talk to internet-strangers from overseas. Not exactly high-dopamine activities… I certainly like the quiet. At night there’s way less distractions. Most everyday tasks are done, no people around, and no notifications popping up.
Only downside, I might need to get up in the morning, and sleep is a thing as well. But other than that, I enjoy it.
I feel my natural inclination is staying up late but the work world over decades has sorta force me away from it. I bet if I could control my schedule again I would want to go to sleep after midnight and wake up about 9ish.
