Wednesday, 18 May, 2005

Jet Lag

I've often heard people talk about jet lag, how flying halfway around the world throws the body's clock out of sync.  Flying east, I heard, was worse than flying west.  Having made the trip from California to Boston a few times and not noticing any ill effects, I mostly discounted the tales of insomnia and keeping weird hours for a few days after coming back from Asia.

Boy, was I wrong.

I got home about midnight on Monday.  My body was convinced that the time was 2:00 pm, and it took me three or four hours to calm down and get to sleep.  Even then I kept waking every couple of hours.  I slept most of Tuesday, was actually functional on Tuesday evening, and stayed up until the wee hours of the morning Wednesday.  Today was a repeat of Tuesday, except that I'm going to crawl into bed at 11:00 pm (immediately after I write this) so that I can get back on a normal schedule tomorrow in preparation for a trip on Friday.

I can tell you from experience that jet lag is real.  Flying back through a 14 hour time difference will throw you off, and you'll most likely be worthless for at least two days.  Build that assumption into your schedule if you're planning a long trip.