As I get older, sleep continues to grow in importance. This certainly isn't unique to me. But I used to stay up really late, especially in college, and function on a whole lot less sleep than I do today. At one point, I even kept track of how late I was staying up, mostly out of curiosity. You can probably only view this if you're fb friends with me:
These days I need sleep or I can't really function. Usually 7-8 hours minimum. I can get through a day on less but there's a limit and a point where I become absolutely worthless. Ask my wife about our first day in Ireland when I didn't sleep on the overnight flight. I don't know if this is a byproduct of always being home and being able to sleep in (I've never had a job outside the house in Maryland) or just part of getting older. Staying home with our toddler certainly isn't helping, as I'm worn out by the end of the day. It's funny to think that I didn't drink coffee before he was born. It's a necessity now and I really like it, especially on nitro.
Anyway the point of all this is I have a variety of interests and my time to pursue them is more limited now that we have a kid and that I stay home with him. I'm not going to play Halo or watch the Witcher when my son is up. My free time is at night for the most part, though I guess that's always been the case and the reason I used to stay up so late. Night time is fun time and if I go to sleep I have to be responsible when I wake up (school/work/kid).
Forever, my desire to do things I'm interested in has always won out over my need to sleep. My wife couldn't believe how often I would stay up until nearly 1 even after our son was born. Now, even though I have less time to myself then ever before, I find myself going to bed earlier (most of the time). We are incredibly lucky that we have a kid who loooves to sleep, it's 12 hours straight every night and I can count on that if I do want to stay up. So I still want to watch movies or binge TV or read or play video games until all hours, but I often choose not to or just spend less time doing it. Sleep is winning.
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