It's that Catholic Guilt

My morning class was cancelled today, so I decided to sleep in as late as I wanted.  I apparently only "wanted" to sleep in an extra 45 minutes.  Or at least part of me did.  My body is saying, "Go back to sleep.  The last two days were awful.  You deserve it."  Meanwhile, my brain is behaving like it's an ADD squirrel on drugs.  "GET UP!  IT'S MOOOOOOORNING!!!!!"  Because my brain wouldn't leave my body alone.  Here I am at 8 am with nothing* to do in the morning for the first time in two weeks, and I'm awake.

I have become completely incapable of sleeping in in the morning, no matter what day of the week it is.  I expect many of you have this problem too, whether you are legal-tastic or not.  Unfortunately, I've gotten my body set to a 7 am to 11 pm schedule, so even though I stayed up until 2 am last night, my brain clicked on at 6:45, and I only managed to put it into sleep mode for another hour.

I read a study a few years ago^ that said turning off the alarm isn't a good thing to do for your health.  Sleeping in on the weekend is apparently bad for your brain, as it confuses your internal clock and makes you more tired.  Back then, this made me feel superior, as I've always been bad at sleeping late.  Now it just frustrates me more because when I'm trying to get much-needed rest, the little voice in the back of my mind is going "It's not good for you anyway."

I would like to smash that little voice with a sledgehammer.

However, I have learned a very neat trick when it comes to turning off that voice in your brain, which I would like to share with you:  Do something.  Doesn't matter what it is.  Whatever tasks your brain is telling you must be accomplished, pick one or two that you can do from bed.  I, for instance, am writing this, and then I am going to make a quick phone call.  All from my bed.  And then my brain can't tell me, "What are you doing?  It's morning!  You need to get busy!"  I got busy.  And now I'm going to take a nap.

Now where is my sledgehammer?

Or I can make do with a giant knife.  Whatever's handy.

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*I mean, it's law school, there's always something to do, not just something incredibly PRESSING.
^Which I of course can't find now.