Maybe I am a vampire. My hubby’s been insisting for a while.
For the most part, I don’t like sunny days – except for photography, and in the winter when they perk up the weeks of dreariness. I prefer my days cloud-covered and moody, and if there’s a bit of rain or fog, even better. Summer is definitely not my season; give me Fall with dense clouds and a spooky chill in the air.
And you know those blissful photos of people sitting on a porch having coffee in the benediction of the gently-glowing morning sun? You’ll never catch me in one of those.
But late at night, when most people have turned out their lights and gone to bed, you’ll find me with a cup of tea, typing out my creepy plots by the light of my illuminated keyboard. That’s an indispensable tool for night-owl authors, by the way.
Most of the people I know do have what’s called an “implicit daytime bias” (such annoying morning people 😉!) It explains why there’s so much lighting in and around our cities these days – our world’s lightscape can actually be seen from space, and the image below was taken in 2012. Imagine how much more intense it looks now.
Bright light bothers me a lot; I love my Transitions®-lens glasses. Around the house, I’m typically going around shutting lights off.
I’m a dyed-in-the-darkness Night Owl. I have been since childhood, completely bucking the trend of most youth to be early risers.
We officially have a scientific name now: a “late chronotype”, and it’s not a matter of choice, either. Science (for the many of us who believe in it – oops, some snarkiness in there) says that whether we’re day or night people comes from our genetics.
A clinical psychologist and sleep specialist, Dr. Michael Brues, links human chronotypes to similar sleep-wake patterns in animals:
- Lions, the early-to-rise and early-to-bed animals/people, about 15% of the population.
- Bears, who, like most humans (40%), wake and sleep with the sunrise and sunset.
- Wolves are the night owls, so I suppose I’m most like them, except for:
- Dolphins (about 15% of the population), who are sensitive to environmental factors such as noise and light. I want a dark, quiet room. In hotel rooms, I’ll either unplug extraneous lighting (like LED alarm clocks) or cover them up with towels. Ceiling smoke detectors with bright green lights drive me bananas – I’ve learned to bring a sleep mask with me, although I don’t like wearing them.
Life is challenging for those of us whose peak energy is at night. Most of the world runs on ‘daylight’ time. Trying to maintain a 9-5 job when it goes against your circadian rhythm can even create health issues, from sleep loss to fatigue and higher levels of stress.
But there has been an evolutionary advantage since prehistoric times for people who are awake in different parts of the 24-hour cycle. In early times, the greatest risk from predators was whenever a village or tribe was sleeping; with at least some people up around the clock, it made life safer.
When my hubby and I went on a camping safari in Botswana, our tents were pitched deep in the bush, in the midst of the wildlife. The safari staff kept a fire going in the middle of camp throughout the night, and hung oil lanterns from our tent posts. Even with such precautions, hyenas and honey badgers sometimes wandered around. The big male elephants in ‘must’ barged through in broad daylight – no one argued with them – and monkeys could tear apart your tent if you didn’t keep it zipped while out on a game drive, but at least they’re diurnal as well.
Our modern propensity for lighting up cities like Christmas trees has had a lot of detrimental effects, on everything from bird migration to astronomy. Perhaps they should take a leaf from the ‘Book of Vampires’: less is more.
This is a shorter post than usual while I’m deep into getting my new novel ready for publication, but I just wanted to say that darkness can be quite lovely and restful, and a shadowy room provides wonderful atmosphere for writing horror novels – especially about vampires and other creatures of the night, mwa ha ha.
Sleep tight, all you day people 😉