Day sleepin’

When people hear my schedule tends to run overnight, that I’m rather turned around, they ask why.

The simple answer is “I live in Phoenix.” It’s 105 degrees, it’s hot, oppressively so. There’s constant, beating sun, no cloud cover, no precipitation. It’s the kind of environment that drives people mad in movies, and with good reason. It’s a hostile, threatening environment, and you spend at least three months seriously uncomfortable throughout the day.

I don’t know that there’s a recognized reverse SAD, but if there isn’t, I think some doctors need to come to Phoenix and observe. People are lethargic, irritable, depressed, and even violent when they work a day shift here. Yet the people at night, normally considered the rough shift, particularly overnight, are much, much happier.

Frankly, it’s just EASIER to sleep through the daytime, and your body tries to enforce it. Wake up a bit before sundown, enough time to go hunting, live overnight, go to bed after another hunt at dawn. Most of the dangerous creatures in the desert are even out in the daytime, particularly the snakes and other bitey things. Coyotes are out at night, but not particularly dangerous to people, and much less stealthy.

Daytime and Arizona just don’t mix.

And yet, colleges here insist on putting the best classes at noon, starting in late August, during some of the worst temperatures of the year.

Shit.