Wednesday 14 December 2011

Sleep Schedule

I've been slacking with my blogging lately! Not posted for a few months.
It's not that i haven't been playing - In fact, i have more than ever probably! I've just not had the inclination to blog. If anybody is really missing my blog posts (as if...) then give me a follow on twitter as i find that a lot more convenient to update fairly frequently :) I'm of course going to keep my blog going, Just not promising to update it every few days.

Pokers been going fairly well recently. I've been doing my usual style of not sticking to any 1 game in particular and just playing whatever i feel like at the time or whatever fits my schedule best. I've been playing a lot of PLO8 sngs on Pokerstars and even gone back to grinding 9 man sngs on Pokerstars.FR the past week - Mainly driven by the ability to make the BOP leaderboards with relative ease thanks to the lower volume of players. You don't have to run like god to get a decent enough score which is nice.

Been trying to fit in a few mtt sessions whenever i can which usually work out ok but i find that my random schedules make them quite difficult to commit to as i don't have big enough blocks of time free (Too many social activities clearly...)
When i do manange to squeeze some in i've been doing fairly well. Nothing life changing but managed to ship a few smaller tourneys for a reasonable payday. Still need to commit to playing some of the bigger buy in tourneys though which i still haven't got around to. Mainly because i always seem to have ice hockey matches on the weekends which i enjoy too much to sacrifice for 'work'.. lol The length of time the big mtts take to play out when you go deep is also something that puts me off them. That said, i am half planning to play the Sunday $10m Guaranteed on Stars this Sunday seeing as i have no ice hockey which takes away my usual excuse! My sleep pattern is shot again so can't blame needing to be in bed by 1am to keep that in line either this weekend...

That leads me on to my blog title... Sleep Schedules (If you're here to just follow poker updates then i suggest you stop reading now!)

I've noticed a lot of poker players having really messed up sleep schedules so it's clearly a hazard of the job but thought where better to seek some advice than off some fellow 'sufferers' :)
I've never been very good at sleeping since i was kid. Well... Not so much the sleeping part, just the going to bed bit.
I hate ending the day and going to sleep - It feels so unproductive & a waste of time. That said, once i'm in bed and asleep, i sleep well (clearly shattered) but then really struggle to get up the next day. I'm really unmotivated in the 'mornings' at the best of time and even more so if i haven't had 7 hours sleep.
I think its mainly a mental issue but am not convinced that my body clock doesn't think theres 24.5 hours in a day as i seem to get tired a little bit later every night. Once i get to the point where i'm sleeping 3am-11am i find it'll quickly implode and ill be sleeping stupid schedules like 8am-3pm within a few days. I usually struggle on with that for a few weeks before i get fed up and try to force myself to basically switch time zones which usually involves me feeling like death for about a week and quite often ended up feeling ill too. Not exactly ideal.

Does anyone else have these kind of issues and how do you feel best to deal with them? Be it advice for changing sleep patterns back effectively or even preventing myself getting into bad patterns in the first place? I've been to the doctors to ask for advice, kept sleep schedule records, tried herbal pills, non herbal pills, etc etc. Basically tried everything but with no success. I used to blame poker but i cant even do that anymore since Black Friday seeing as the best games are usually in the evenings in the UK. I would like to get it sorted or at least a bit more under control but am a bit lost with who to turn to seeing as my doctor was entirely useless and basically told me to just live with it. You speak to most people and they say go to the gym, work harder, get a proper job and you'll be tired. They don't seem to understand that even when i'm shattered i don't seem to want to go to bed though! Most people seem to grow out of it when they get older but if anything, i'm worse now than i was in my teens & i'm now 25...

Doubt anybody can help as even google can't but i thought i'd throw it out there :)

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