I Don’t Do Mornings

For most of my life, I have worked by myself. For a total of about 12 years, I worked in an office. Two years in the 1970s in a think tank, and basically all of the 1980s in IT departments of three different organizations.

In each of the offices where I worked, there was at least one person with a coffee mug that said something like, “I don’t do mornings.” Each of these persons would invariably chug coffee in the morning and not be at his or her best. Most of them performed better in the afternoons, except for one guy who drank his lunch and didn’t do any better in the afternoon than he did in the morning. He didn’t last long.

Biologically, I have a lot in common with these people. If the outside world didn’t interfere, I’d go to bed at noon and wake up at 8 p.m. — give or take a few hours each way. It seems like one of the perks of being a self-employed professional gambler is that you can set your hours however you please. For me, it doesn’t work that way.  

I decided decades ago that I wanted to have more in my life than just gambling. That includes a wife, various sorts of appointments, and personal relationships with people who don’t share my preferred hours. I have yet to find a dentist who has regular office hours that include 3 a.m.

In addition to these relationships, there are many video poker opportunities that are time-dependent. The casino day can start at midnight, 3 a.m., 6 a.m., or at any other time. There is usually less competition for machines during these graveyard hours. Often, whenever the casino day begins, it’s the early bird who gets the worm.

Some promotions, including most drawings, take place during the day or evening hours. Although I did play regularly at a bar years ago that gave you an extra $500 if you hit a royal flush between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m., such promotions are rare. Usually time-sensitive promotions happen on the other side of the clock. For twenty weeks a year, I teach classes from noon to 4 p.m. It never seriously occurred to me to try to teach the same classes between midnight and 4 a.m. Those hours would be better for me, but I’d have far fewer students in my classes and very likely no casino would be willing to sponsor them.

Another problem is that the best times to gamble vary from day to day. It could easily be that I teach classes in the daytime on Tuesday, but a special promotion happens somewhere beginning at midnight Tuesday. I need to choose whether I can function at a high level for a lot of consecutive hours or find time to take a nap after class.

Me, I’m a napper. I try to arrange my schedule so that whenever I need to mentally “perform,” I’m well rested, fed, and exercised. This requires the willingness to go to bed at all hours of the day and night. My exercise routine takes place sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the evening (and, unfortunately, sometimes not at all). And I can eat “breakfast stuff” at any time of the night or day.

I know some video poker pros and semi-pros who absolutely will not (or possibly cannot) change their sleeping schedule around to fit circumstances. If that works for them, great. For me, I decided that it was far too expensive to act this way.

Many friends are nervous about calling me at any time of the day or night because they don’t know whether I’m sleeping or not. If I am, they don’t want to wake me up. And I’m glad they are nervous. I much prefer texts or emails anyway. If I do pick up the phone, at any time of the day or night, I usually say “good morning.” If I have indeed just awoken, I may not know what time it is. If I haven’t just awoken, I may not want you to be sure.

Before I married Bonnie about five years ago, I had a long talk with her about my lifestyle. She was 70 years old at the time and had always kept “normal” hours. She had never much believed in napping and frankly had never known anybody with such an unusual sleeping schedule. She and her heirs were already nervous about her getting involved with a professional gambler. Fortunately, she decided she could live with all this and now sees the advantages of napping herself.

Now that I’m in my 70s, I’m finding myself sleeping more than ever. How much is age and how much is my biological clock being screwed up from not having any sort of regular schedule for decades, I just don’t know. Probably both are factors.