In early June of 2010, my family and I moved from the United States back to the United Kingdom; in November of 2012, the United States held its 57th presidential election. The two events by themselves are completely unrelated to each other, but there is something significant to me that links them.
When I woke up in Portland, Oregon for day of our flight, I stayed awake for around 24 hours. I was not bored when waiting at the airport, I was completely alert on the nine-hour flight (I was the only one of us not to sleep on the plane), still not tired when in Amsterdam or even when we had to wait for well over an hour in Manchester for my grandparents to arrive in the minibus to pick us up. It was only during the minibus ride the exhaustion caught up on me and I had to fight to keep awake (before then, it was unprecedented for me to sleep in a vehicle).
On the day of the presidential election, I woke up around 7:00-7:30am; I wanted to stay up for the results, and since the United Kingdom is five hours ahead of the East Coast of the United States, I knew I would be staying up for the night. Sure enough, I sailed past 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, and 6:00am without any drowsiness; the lack of sleep caught up with me when I reached the 24 hour mark of being awake, and by then the result of the election had long been announced. I again found myself fighting to not fall asleep, and ended up going to bed for a few hours at the time I usually get up.
From these two events I learnt that if I want or need to keep myself awake for 24 hours or more I can, but once the situation I have to be awake for concludes, the need for sleep hits me...and with a vengeance. For the minibus ride, our flights were long over and we were back in the United Kingdom; with the election, I knew the main result by the time 24 hours came around. With the main goals resolved, why remain awake?
I'm sure there will be many more occasions for me to keep awake for 24 hours or more, only to rapidly fall into a deep sleep when the event is over. The worst part is not keeping awake or even, in itself, falling asleep at the end...it's sleeping during the daylight that bothers me!
I stayed awake for over 24 hours when I went to England too. I think it was more about the timing of my flight and the time difference. I used to be able to do it more when I was younger, but it keeps getting harder and harder every year. Or maybe I just get less motivated?
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome that you stayed up to watch the presidential election. I stayed up past my bedtime that night too. It was just all so exciting!!
Our flight from Portland was around midday/1:00, so for a nine hour flight it would have been around 10:00pm if I'd still been in the US that day.
DeletePerhaps you have more work than you used to? I prefer not to say "getting old"! :P
Yep, my brother and I were on the Internet all night night to follow the results! We would have stayed up no matter what happened, but it was worth being up at 4:00am to know the result.