Waking Up Early: Day 3

The clock reads 7:12am, which means I've been awake for fifty-seven minutes. Though I have already had breakfast, showered, dressed and begun working, I still find myself half laying on the couch, hardly able to stay awake. The engine of my mind has barely turned over, like an old car on a cold morning, but I'm determined to keep trying for there is plenty more to get done before lunch. It's day three of my waking up early experiment, which was actually born out of necessity, so it should probably be called My Conscience Decision To Become A Morning Person.

I have never been an early riser, primarily because I didn't need to be. My job affords me the ability to work from home, and even with long writing sessions added to my daily dose of work, I seldom need to set an alarm clock. And it certainly helps that I don't have any kids and that we have covered every conceivable entrance of light into our bedroom with heavy, dark curtains. So I usually get up when I get up, often between 9 and 9:30am, depending on the previous nights' activities.

But with Christmas coming, grad school application deadlines looming and the pending arrival of our little girl, a change was needed. So I set out to find ways to add time to my day, in whatever ways I could. I contemplated giving up certain luxuries, like going to the gym, and even thought about switching to a polyphasic sleep schedule, which would have given me twenty-one hours of awake time every day. In the end, though, I simply decided to wake up earlier.

I realize that waking up at 6:15am every day is the standard way of life for many, many adults. I know this because each morning, as I unsteadily walk from the bedroom to the kitchen in pursuit of yoghurt, I can hear the freeway abuzz with commuters who have waken much earlier than me. So I understand I was in the minority before and only now am joining the ranks of most working adults and every last parent on earth. Even still, the past three mornings have not been easy.

The clock now reads 8:47am and I'm nearly just as groggy as I was ninety minutes ago. But in that time I've written this post and nearly finished my current book, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And all this before I used to get up. I guess it's a start...