My weekend might not start on a Friday like everyone else's, because I could be working on Saturday and Sunday. But when I do get the chance to have some weekend time, I like to hang out with my friends and just chill out on the couch - maybe we'll watch a documentary or a comedy.
TV jobs that I've had in the past, one of the side effects that is so wonderful is that it gives you a sense of normalcy because you're going to the same place every day, and you sleep in your own bed at night.
I sleep for about four hours a night, or day really. I go to bed at, like, 9 A.M., sleep for four hours, then get up and start the day again. I don't mind if that's not healthy.
So when you go to sleep at night, if you're someone who hasn't had any sleep deprivation, you have a very normal sleep pattern, what we tend to see is that, in adults, they go to bed and they start off by going into the deeper stages sleep.
I'm not disciplined in terms of scheduling. I work best late at night, but I can't do that when I'm on a TV show - our hours are roughly 10-6:30, so I have to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. So I'll sometimes write fiction for an hour or two in the evenings, or several hours on the weekend afternoons - unless I'm actively writing a script for the show I'm working on, in which case there's no time to write fiction at all.
I love to sleep because I need the rest, but I hate to miss something. I would love to be able to take a pill that I wouldn't have to sleep. So, sometimes what keeps me up at night is just that I don't want to say good-bye to that day. And at the same time, I love to start the next day. I think I'm essentially a very unsettled person.
Days were tough to pass. So, I used to work out in the mornings and sleep during the day. I turned day into night, night into day.
I was a bouncer when I was in DePaul in Chicago at the theater school. I threw drunks out of bars - unless I had a play running that weekend. But I only had two actual fights. Some were like out of old Westerns.
Whate'er thy joys, they vanish with the day:
Whate'er thy griefs, in sleep they fade away,
To sleep! to sleep!
Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past:
Sleep, happy soul, all life will sleep at last.
I never get enough sleep, even when I travel. I wake up in the middle of the night, either with the help of my kids or because my mind is going. I wish I got eight hours a night, but it is more like an interrupted six or seven. The secret is to go to sleep well before midnight.
I'm not really a fan of sleep, to be honest with you. I work out at 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night, and sometimes I just keep going. I've never been a big sleeper.
I don't like to be gone all weekend and at night too. Because for 20 years, I've had children who are in school.
I've always been a deep sleeper; because I come from such a large family - there are 10 kids - I could sleep through anything. Even with my last day job, I'd sleep in later and later and start coming in an hour-and-a-half late. I got fired twice before I really got fired.
Sleep and I do not have a good relationship. We have never been good friends. I am constantly chasing sleep and then pushing it away. A good night's sleep is my white whale. Like Ahab, I am also a total drama queen about it. I love to talk about how little sleep I get. I brag about it, as if it is a true indication of how hard I work.
We've looked at sleep diaries of patients with insomnia, and they'll say that they don't sleep for one or two days. And the body actually has a natural function, after about the third day to start catching up and you get a little bit more sleep the third night. And that's usually what I tell my patients.
When I was fighting at a weekend, I would be in when my friends were out. I never had time to go out and go off the rails.