Same here: it definitely seems to happen more with age.

I lucked in today though. Woke up at 4AM, gave up on getting back to sleep at 5AM and started reading, and at 5.30AM the guy upstairs who's been doing a load of DIY started clumping around and hammering stuff.

I'd have been really pissed off if that had woken me up.

Yeah - Same here. I seem to need a random amount of sleep between 6 and 9 hours. No way of telling which it'll be when I go to bed.

I've also started napping on weekend afternoons & just falling asleep on an evening. Sucks to be older.

I seem to be incapable of getting enough sleep. 9 hours still isn't enough. :(

I think that waking up early thing can be stress-related sometimes. When I first got together with my wife, my now mother-in-law was just getting into full swing with some anxiety-related disorder that resulted in her waking at 4 in the morning and starting to do laundry every day. Early retirement seemed to fix it for her.

GIVE UP WORK!

There is definitely some anxiety. It is not helping.

Unisom, dude. It's your friend. It doesn't necessarily help me get to sleep, but it holds me in a heavy slumber for at least eight hours. I think it must cause some crazy dreams, too. Last night I dreamed that I had developed a new line of sinks and bathtubs to be used specifically by the blind, called "Pregneur". I don't know where that name came from, but I was adamant that this name was to be used with my revolutionary new product.

Part of it's being older, but anxiety can kick you ass, too. My business went bankrupt last year, and needless to say, it was not the happy, care-free time of my early twenties. My friendly local headshrinker prescribed me klonapin, and A) I sleep through the night B) have stopped trying to chew my tongue off.

I once determined that I'm not human. For six vacation days with absolutely no committments, *wistful sigh* I only went to sleep when I was tired and only woke up when I had enough rest. There was pretty much no outside stresses at all, give or take a late Hitchcock movie or two. The first night, I went to bed at midnight. The second night, 2 a.m. (and woke up later accordingly). By the last night I went to bed around 5 a.m. Obviously my circadian rhythm and I are not on a 24-hour clock; therefore, I am an alien and not of this earth.

No matter what time I go to bed I'm usually awake by 5.30, 6am at the latest. On a 'school night' (where I have to get up for the office next day), I'm usually in bed before 11pm. On a weekend or if I'm working from home next day, I'm rarely in bed before 1am, but I'll be wide awake at 6, desperate to pee usually, and once I get out of bed, I'm up for the day.

I naturally wake up after about 9-10 hours of sleep. I also, fairly frequently, have a two hour nap in the afternoon. Thank the dog I don't have to work. BUT I also suffer from insomnia every two or three months. I'll go a week or so without much sleep. It's enough to drive one mad.

When I'm in anxiety mode and I'm not getting enough sleep [and this time of year esp] I take benadryl before bed sometimes. This helps keep me a little muzzy-headed in the morning so that I don't sort of wake up eyes-snap-open way too damned early. On the other hand, waking up early here means waking up before my noisy neighbors, so there is that.

Obviously my circadian rhythm and I are not on a 24-hour clock; therefore, I am an alien and not of this earth.

Actually that's pretty normal but for most people it's a 25-ish hour cycle.