I’ve been told jet lag after traveling east is worse than jet lag after traveling west. Given the distance I usually fly, jet lag is jet lag, and either way sucks equally.
I’ve tended to reverse that conventional wisdom only because I’ve traveled to Hawaiʻi a few times without ever leaving Central time. That happened in 2008. It happened last year and this year as well, but after a few days, my clock aligns with Hawaiian time.
This year is extraordinary since I stayed in Hawaiʻi for a record four weeks, which gave my body time to settle into the Hawaiian time zone.
Yesterday, I woke up at 8 a.m. I usually gain consciousness at around 6 a.m. — sometimes 5 a.m. if the neighbors clang around their bathroom — and don’t get out of bed till 7 a.m. But when I say I woke up at 8 a.m., I mean I gained consciousness at 8 a.m. I didn’t get out of bed till 9 a.m.
That would be 4 a.m. HST, which is when I would gain consciousness to get ready for the 5 a.m. watch for my dad. It took a while to shake that routine after he died, but it wasn’t uncommon for me to get up for something at 4 a.m. HST.
I didn’t go to bed till 3 a.m., or 11 p.m. HST.
I got the jet lag bad.
Now I see where the conventional wisdom is true. When your body thinks it’s midnight when it’s really 8 p.m., it’s easy just to sleep it off. But when you have to go bed at midnight, and your body insists there’s four hours of wakefulness to go, it’s a pain in the ass.
Tonight, I might actually be tired enough to turn in at 2 a.m.