Exhausted but Awake

I have been absent from this blog because of the grading that characterizes the end of every semester of college teaching. Many things are pushed aside as the emphasis is placed on reading essays and compiling grades. The final two days of the semester I was awake until almost noon before I finally collapsed into bed and got about five or six hours of sleep. Now my sleeping schedule is terribly out of whack because of the changes to my internal clock. I don't know when I'll be able to get to bed earlier in the morning, say, before 2:00 a.m. Anymore, I am most comfortable sleeping when the sun is up because of the pattern that was established during the semester. There were a few weeks when I had the schedule of a normal person, that is, getting up at 6:30 a.m. and remaining awake during the day. That routine didn't usually allow me to get much work done. It was too easy to take a walk or to run errands when I should have been reading through my students' essays or typing up comments. Once the essays started to back up, I began staying awake through the night so that I would concentrate on the grading. After my kid got up at 6:30 a.m., I got his breakfast and took him to school before I went to bed for about six hours. This pattern changed on weekends. Even so, the pattern has become so engrained that it may take another week before my sleeping schedule changes radically.