After boasting recently about how well I slept on a vacation break, I have since discovered I am due for a night of tossing and turning if I have caffeine after about 3 p.m.

Yes, I am old enough to where an afternoon cup of coffee or Diet Coke will keep me contemplating well into the night, making the following morning a zombie-like existence of yawns and yammers.

For the most part, I have been sleeping well and I credit renewing my membership at the Stevens Wellness Center after its grand re-opening. A few classes each week help me get moving and help my body get tired. Some tennis one or two nights a week also helps.

But caffeine, while a necessary evil in the morning, is a cursed partner in the evening, worse even than a conscience of questions. My caffeine work fuel needs to stop just after noon in order to let me slumber and refuel for the following day.

My brother and I used to fight naps when we were pre-schoolers. We would look at each other on our trundle beds and silently get up to play in our room until enough time had passed where we thought our mother wouldn’t notice we hadn’t been to sleep. (She noticed everything, but was probably tired enough herself to know that shuteye was a blessed respite from her four children.)

After about age 25, we come to recognize that naps are God’s gift to tired bodies. The Lord rested on the seventh day, and we all followed suit as soon as we ate lunch, excused ourselves to the couch and tuned into to a professional golf event on the television.

They say toddlers need 10-13 hours of sleep and grown adults need 7-9 hours to keep young bodies growing and old ones functioning properly. Even college-aged kids need 8 or 9 hours, so they learn to skip class as they test those boundary limits of staying out late and crawling into class for a mid-term they forgot about. (That last example was totally anecdotal and not at all based on personal history at the University of Texas in my Astronomy 101 class.)

There are many nights when 9 hours of sleep would have me singing the “American Dad” theme when I woke: “Good morning, U.S.A.! I’’ve got a feeling that it’s gonna be a wonderful day….” But then there are other days — normal days — where the coffee pot is the first and most important interaction of the day.

And after age 50, “afternoon delight” is a nap and not what it used to mean.

These days on social media, some influencers — that’s what they call themselves — boast about how early they rise in the morning.

There’s the 5 a.m. club, where people rise before most and use that quiet time to plan their day, maybe get a bit of exercise and generally be better than the rest of us. Some of them even start this with a 4 a.m. club to get that extra hour of superiority.

This allows our workaholic-filled society to feel it is more productive and  getting brownie points for “workin’ for the man” — the man being a billionaire and likely getting 8 to 10 hours of sleep on his yacht in the French Riviera.

We in the journalism profession work long hours as well, but it’s for low pay so we don’t feel as superior. We are, indeed, ink-stained wretches and coffee-fueled wordsmiths.

We can get up super early as well … but only if we go to bed early. And if we don’t drink caffeine past the lunch hour.

ken@fredericksburgstandard.com