Are your circadian rhythms whacky?

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I am typically a very disciplined, structured person, and I do things orderly and timely, and have alot of self control.

But there is one thing about me that is just whack that I have little control over, and it's my circadian rhythms. They are just all over the place and I have been this way for a long time.

I typically cannot force myself to go to sleep before 1 am. It takes alot of will to get myself to sleep at an early, regular time.

If I am not working, and don't have a schedule to follow, my sleep cycles will just go all over. I will stay awake for like 20 hours, sleep for 10 hours. And my daily cycle will like cycle around the clock, so I will wake up at 10 am, one day, 12 am the next, 2 pm the next, 4pm next, 6pm next. If I have no schedule I will fall asleep and wake up at a different time everyday.

Is this common of autism? Do any of you have whacky circadian rhythms and find it really hard to control your sleep schedule?

I sometimes wonder if I have a circadian rhythm.

My natural tendency is to want stay awake until I'm tired and then go to sleep. I think if I just let this happen I would be on a natural swing shift all the time.

Yes.

I often don't go to sleep (or even begin to feel sleepy) until 5 or 6 AM and wake around 1 PM. Every once in a while, for one reason or another, I'll get very tired during the day and go to bed at a more "usual" time like 10 or 11 PM. That will stick for several days, and then over the next couple of weeks or so my bedtime will slowly drift back to the early morning hours.

Same here as what the OP wrote.
I'm a nocturnal person I guess. Whenever I have no duties, my life quickly changes and I'm awake at night and asleep at day. My theory is simply because the night has so little sensory input, it's just more comfortable, the perfect alonetime and it "recharges" me to that point that I'm awake instead of tired while the day makes me tired.
I often have troubles having a proper sleeping pattern because it constantly changes, one time I go to bed at 2AM, the other time at 3AM, then I do an all-nighter and am tired all day and sleep around afternoon, but then I am awake at night, etc., it's a vicious circle and it's hard to get used to a diurnal life.

And honestly, I prefer the night.

a sleep rythm? nah, that's for chumps.

i try to keep one as i am forced into a day-orientated schedule (college) so i force myself to go to sleep and get out of bed at semi-normal times, but i cannot force myself to sleep.
usually, i use that time to think, write/brainstorm on essays and generally meditate to either be productive or get some kind of rest.
i make up for the lack of actual sleep with daytime meditation too, and in weekends i let go of all rythm to truy make up for the sleep i missed.
in this way, i sleep 3-4 hours on a weeknight, and close to 12 hours in weekends...

Right now, I'm trying to shift my sleeping hours into the daytime as much as possible.

A certain employee who usually works from his home several hundred miles away is here for a few days. He is becoming more and more apt to fly off the handle at the smallest of things. He got into town last night and I ran into him. Within about three minutes, he was out of control and yelling at me when all I did was make a comment about us needing to backup certain data on a computer. This was far worse than the next to last time he was here and last time was a disaster.

The last time he was here was over Christmas. I just saw him out of the corner of my eye a couple of times. He was gone before I knew it.

The next to last time he was here, he was cooking spaghetti for him and his grandfather in the kitchen in the back of the office building. He was using a cooking pot that is much too small for spaghetti (hint: use the largest cooking pot you have for the best results) and when he put the spaghetti in the pot, he just left it there sticking out of the boiling water and made no effort to try to get it all in the water so that it would be as consistent as possible. All I did was suggest that he push the spaghetti in the water so that it would cook more consistently and he went into a screaming fit. His grandfather looked rather puzzled and apologetic about the tantrum.

It doesn't help at all that I hate to tiptoe around anyone. I tend to say what I have to say and that would definitely push him into a rage.

I was talking to one of the women who works here and she said that she is getting more and more scared of him.

I'm seriously hoping to avoid him the rest of the time he is here. I'm hoping that by working all night and then going to sleep, I can minimize any chances of future encounters with him. He can't go home soon enough to suit me.

I've been diagnosed with "Circadian Rhythm Disorder- Irregular Sleep-Wake Type", so yes, I'd say my circadian rhythms are bizarre.

I've actually come to wonder if I even have a circadian rhythm at all. It's like I can't sleep all night or stay awake all day. I can be very very tired, take a short nap, and then feel very refreshed, only until I get tired again, which can be a few hours, or for the rest of the day. Only last night, I couldn't sleep for most of the night.

My mantra has always been: I am a morning person and a night owl. Sleep is boring! Though now that I am aging, I have less say in the matter.

Do any of you have trouble with "daylight savings time change"? I am dreading "spring ahead" where you set your clocks ahead one hour. I get so messed up and I complain for weeks. I don't understand why "they - whatever powers that be" have to mess with the time. Sheesh.

yeah, they're completely messed up!

My sleep cycles are also messed up. I have weird periods in which I won't sleep for approximately 40h and then sleep 12h, then going to bed between 5 and 8AM, sleep until 3-4PM... I both love and hate those periods. Indeed I love the night, its calm, it also recharges me a lot and I'm much more creative at nights. In those periods I compose a lot of music and write a lot of texts. But at the same time I have a strange feeling of emptiness or that I'm "missing something"... + after a while my organism starts to suffer from the night rhythm. So I try as much as I can to reduce those periods and keep a day rhythm. At the moment I go to bed around 11PM and wake up around 8-9AM. That rhythm is ok, I still have some night moments to enjoy but I never know how long it can last...

Is there actually a biological reason for this?

I read somewhere in some study they found aspies have lower melatonin levels? Maybe that could be it?