(writer’s prerogative; I’m actually near Oxford but that doesn’t have the ring)

I’m just wrapping up another exciting business trip to the UK and its 2am and I’m completely wired for no reason. My flight back is at 7:30am which necessitated me setting my alarm for 3am (awake, shower, drive, return rental car, wade through Heathrow…) so it looks like I won’t be getting much sleep tonight. This leads me to ponder my problems with jet lag.

On my several unplanned European vacations lately, my sleep pattern has gone as follows.

Night 1: Spent on a plane. Main flight duration about 6-8 hours. Lights on and activity on the plane for 2-3 of those hours. Day 1 I’m pretty wiped.
Night 2: Usually accidentally fall asleep at 8pm or whenever I get into the hotel because I’m exhausted from the long night before. Sleep great, wake up early.
Nights 3-last: Tired early, go to bed at a reasonable time, but as the days go on, I wake up around 4am for around an hour and this gets progressively earlier and longer in subsequent nights.
Return day: Wake up early, catch a flight, gain ~8 hours and have an absurdly long day. Turn into a zombie around 7pm back home. Literally. Eating brains.
Days back home: Wake up at 4am and get tired at 8pm. These get progressively later over the course of 3-4 days.

The primary question is, why do I wake up in the middle of the night while I’m overseas? This usually doesn’t go away over the course of a week either but I get tired and wake up at the appropriate times. 4am in Europe corresponds to about 7-8pm back home. What is usually happening then that I so urgently need to be awake then? A follow up to this is, why do I not feel the least bit tired during the days when I have been awake for a sizable portion of the evening? Back home, if I don’t get 8 (and preferably 9) good hours at night, its tough getting up in the morning and I often feel tired throughout the day.

On the plus side, all of the extra time awake lets me get caught up on my reading (What Would Google Do?, My Life on the Run) and movies (Hitch, Amelie, Up in the Air, The Informant!). It’s like the universe is saying, “Here is some bonus time in life, but the catch is that it is dark out, everything is closed, everyone else is unconscious, and you’re in an area that you’re not familiar with. Enjoy!” Oh, silly Universe…