Sleeping in until 6:00am is suddenly one of my favorite parts of the week

I know a few people will read that headline and ask, "Since when is 6:00am sleeping in?"

And you're right. For most, a 6:00am wake-up time isn't exactly an indulgence.

But I am, and for most of my life have been, an early riser. Not because I've had to do it for work or anything, but mostly because I love getting a head start on the day.

Since I began going to the gym five mornings a week, I've been getting out of bed around 4:45am. I like to make it to Ohio Sports & Fitness just ahead of what I call The 5:30 Crew, which is a small but dedicated contingent of fellow pre-dawn exercisers.

Whenever I have a session with my trainer Kirk, I stay in bed until 5:15, since he and I don't meet up until 6:00am anyway.

But on those two rest days a week, I get lazy and sleep all the way until the big hand on the clock points straight up and the little hand points straight down.

Scandalous!

I could probably stay in bed even longer, but my body is always ready and raring to go by 6:00. Plus I really have to pee by that point, so there's no use fighting it.

Still, I can't tell you how much I enjoy those "sleep-in" days. I always feel like I've earned them after three or four days in a row of early gym-going, then scrambling to come home, shower, change and head to the office for a full day of work.

I should point out that in order to get a decent amount of rest, I'll sometimes ingest a couple of 5mg melatonin gummies the night before. I recently blogged about how I need to have my wife in the room in order to fall asleep, but the gummies have changed that situation drastically.

Now I rarely even notice when she comes to bed, that's how deeply asleep I am.

Interestingly – and don't ask me why I remember the exact date, I just do – I got almost no sleep 28 years ago last night because I was so worried about starting a new job the next day at a company called Self-Funded Plans. That sort of anxiety-induced insomnia used to hit me several times a year.

But these days? Never. My heads hits the pillow, and within a couple of minutes I'm out.

I wake up when it's technically still night time, of course, but there's always those 6:00am sleep-in days to make me feel like I'm living a life of luxury.

Learning to go to bed on my own

For 32 years, I have been sleeping next to my wife.

When we were first married, we had a queen-sized bed, which meant we were fairly close to each other every night.

Then, when we moved into our current home in 2003, we bought a king-sized bed, which afforded us acres and acres of personal space in which to stretch out as we dozed off.

But we still went to bed at the same time, even if it meant we were no longer right next to each other.

This is the point, though, where Terry and I differ. If she is tired, she can climb into that bed by herself and fall more or less immediately to sleep.

I, on the other hand, have a really hard time falling asleep if she's not there.

More specifically, if I know she's in the living room watching TV, I will lay there with my eyes wide open until she comes into the room and turns in for the night.

I cannot, for whatever reason, easily get to sleep unless she's there.

This generally hasn't been a problem except when I need to get up early the next day, and therefore need to get to bed early the previous evening.

An early wake-up time for me is 5am. That's when I get up on days I work out at the gym, and it requires me to fall asleep at or before 10pm the previous night if I'm going to get enough rest.

Terry prefers to go to bed somewhat later than 10 o'clock (sometimes later than 11 o'clock), which leaves me in somewhat of a conundrum.

Either I learn to fall asleep without her there, or I drag my way tired and sleep-deprived through the next day.

So far, try as I might, "tired and sleep-deprived" appears to be winning.

I can't explain why I need to have my wife there if I'm going to sleep. I just do, and the harder I try to overcome it, the worse it is.

Rather than forcing Terry to turn in well before she's ready, I'm thinking what I need is a life-sized Terry robot next to me in the bed. It will be programmed to kiss me goodnight, then turn over and go to sleep like Terry does.

I would also like it to say "Yes, honey, of course you're right" in response to anything I say, but maybe that's asking too much.

With gainful employment on the horizon, I need to get back to my 5am wake-up time

It is rare that anyone in the house is awake before me. Even over these last couple of months of not having a job, "sleeping in" for me is when I don't roll out of bed until after 6am

I have always been an early riser, and presumably I will always be an early riser.

Still, my current schedule, while not exactly what you would call "decadent," won't do once I start work at Goodyear next week. I need to get back to setting that tried-and-true 5am alarm.

I could get up later than that, but I'm not willing to sacrifice any part of my morning routine, which will generally look like this on days I'm in the office:

5am-5:30am: Get up, get dressed for exercise, get the cats fresh food and water, scoop their litter boxes, sweep around those litter boxes

5:30am-6:10am: Exercise, cool down

6:10am-6:30am: Shower, get dressed (only 20 minutes...this is the advantage of being a 51-year-old man)

6:30am-6:50am: Eat breakfast, scan the papers

6:50am-7:00am: Brush teeth, get ready, get out the door

7:00am-7:45am: Drive to work

7:45am-8:00am: Get in, get to my desk, get coffee, and get going

Right now Goodyear staff are only in the office two days a week, and that arrangement is likely to last several months while they figure out what their workplace model is really going to look like. I could potentially sleep in a bit on work-from-home days, though I'm still likely to be up at 5:00 and maybe exercise a while longer, or take some extra time to empty the dishwasher, start laundry, etc.

I know many of you get up much earlier than 5am, and many are up, shall we say, significantly later in the morning. Either way, I'm looking forward to getting back into more of a rigid schedule.