Christina Wyman is done with late nights, and at 46 she is making no apologies for it. The author and essayist has laid out the case for a life built around early bedtimes, pre-dinner eating, and what she calls “matinee everything”: concerts, restaurants, and any gathering that currently assumes its guests can function happily well past 9pm.
The arithmetic of her day is precise. Wyman wakes at around 5:30am without an alarm, is rarely outside her home after 8pm, and does not eat after 6pm unless something genuinely prevents it. By 7:30pm she is typically in bed, accompanied by one or two cats, a night mask, a bite splint, and a book. In summer, she writes, the sun outlasts her.
The concert that proved she was done with late nights
The decisive test came with Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour stop in Detroit. According to Eltonography, John played Little Caesars Arena on 9 February 2022, opening with ‘Bennie and the Jets’ across a 22-song set. A second Detroit date on 18 July 2022 also appears in tour records; Wyman’s reference to an 8pm seating with ‘Bennie and the Jets’ as the opener is consistent with both dates’ known setlists, and Eltonography does not confirm which show she attended.
By the time she and her spouse found their seats that evening, she was already calculating the toll on the following two days. She concedes the experience was survivable, but says she spent it ‘kicking and screaming the entire time.’
The tour itself was a major undertaking. The Elton John official site records that the North American stadium run opened at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia on 15 July 2022 and closed with back-to-back performances at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on 19 and 20 November 2022. Wyman’s Detroit night was one stop in a months-long farewell.
Before the concert, she writes, the last time she had been sentient past midnight was during her engagement in Rome, where she discovered that Romans eat late and stay up even later still. The lesson about her own limits, however, was already being written.
When staying up late costs two days
Breaking her schedule carries real costs. Wyman describes the result as ‘knock-down, drag-out sleep-deprived incoherence’, the kind that has her questioning whether she remembered to put on trousers, a concern that, on at least one occasion, did not surface until she was standing in the produce aisle. A morning coffee, she says flatly, does not fix it.
Her parents used to say that nothing good happens after midnight. Wyman has moved the cutoff. She frames this not as a personality quirk or a passing mood, but as an honest reckoning with how her body actually works after years of pretending otherwise. ‘Nothing good happens after 8 p.m.,’ she writes, and the rule is non-negotiable.
For someone done with late nights, there are very few events or people she estimates would persuade her to stay awake past 9 or 10pm. The count fits on one hand. Her husband broadly follows her schedule, though she notes he is free to stay out as long as he wishes.
Matinee concerts, an early bedtime, and no regrets
The lifestyle has its pleasures. On evenings when friends with young children are managing bathtime and bedtime resistance, Wyman texts to brag about her already-recumbent position, cat in attendance, night mask in place. She notes, with evident satisfaction, that they remain her friends.
She grew up wanting to be a professional singer and is now a children’s author, a career she notes carries its own irony: many of her readers have curfews of their own. ‘Children need their sleep,’ she writes. ‘We all need our sleep.’
The one touring exception she has carved out this season is Afroman. She holds tickets to his Freedom of Speech tour, which Consequence reports runs through at least October 2026, with a stop at the Lorain Palace Theatre on 10 October 2026 among the scheduled dates. Whether Wyman, resolutely done with late nights, can make the set time work is the one question she has not yet answered.
For anyone assuming she keeps a night owl’s hours, her answer is blunt: ‘Do I look like a bat or a tree frog to you? I’m afraid we’ll have to meet during the day.’ The Afroman tour date this autumn will settle whether that rule has any give at all.