Of late, I have been feeling more and more tired. It seems that my normal practice of using the weekend to catch up on the sleep I lost over the week just isn’t working anymore. I have never really been able to sleep when I am tired, I just seem to lie there for hours thinking about nothing (the Barenaked Ladies described it best as “thinking about, oh what to think about”). Lately that problem, combined with earlier mornings, has me wishing for a national one month mandatory sleeping period. (I’m having trouble trying to push that one through parliament :).

So the other night, during one of my “what could I think about that will make me sleepy” periods, I started trying to figure out how I developed my sleeping problem. I have in the past blamed my problems on the Sprung Greenhouse, a failed attempt to grow weird looking cucumbers in Newfoundland at the cost of Millions in tax payers money. See, the project was basically set up in my backyard, and for the duration of operation, my street was cursed with perpetual sunlight (it made playing spotlight suck). The other night though, I strayed away from this idea and move to TV and time zones.

Now you’re thinking “TV, I can see that, but timezones?” Well, its not really timezones and its not really TV, its the combination of them both. You see, I used to watch a staggering amount of television. Throughout high school and undergrad, when I was in the house and not studying, you would find me in front of a TV in one form or another. I watched all sorts of different programs, and like most people, I was drawn to primetime.

Here in lies the problem, “Primetime.” See primetime is 8-11pm, except that is 8-11pm where large portions of people live in North America. In my case, I am closest (1.5hrs by the timezones) to the large mass of people living in Eastern Standard Time. So, for me (and everyone else in Newfoundland) “Primetime” is 9:30pm-12:30am. Not exactly the kind of hours to base a good sleep regiment around.

Being a fan of the one hour drama such as “Law and Order” that come on late, I quickly developed a stay up late and sleep to the last possible minute lifestyle. For many years that lifestyle suited me well, but it seems that I am not immune to time and it is now catching up to me. I’m sure I will adjust sooner or later, but for now I am left to feel tired. Maybe as we move toward TV-on-Demand, future generations will have the freedom to schedule their own TV and avoid sleep deprivation in their later years. Or maybe, my sleepless state has caused me to ramble on about nothing.