I've always wanted to be a morning person.
Well, that's not entire true. I've never wanted to be one of those people who are happy and chipper at ungodly hours of the morning. I don't think I'd wish that on anyone. No, I've only ever wanted to be consistently awake, pre-dawn, without feeling completely miserable for the rest of the day.
It seems that you can do so much more as an early riser. Two or three hours are available to you without any distractions or interruptions -- no ringing phones or filling inboxes. In exchange you might lose two, possibly three hours in the late evening. But what use is that time, anyway? I'd rather have an extra hour with the paper than an extra hour of Dancing with the Bachelors.
And honestly, I simply admire early risers. Not only because they're generally more productive and well adjusted, but because they have the sheer superhuman willpower necessary to get up while it's dark.
For some people this is a sort of biological given. For whatever reason, naturally gifted early risers have internal clocks set to wake before the sun. Other people are able to reset their natural biological clocks with a bedtime immediately following "Jeopardy!" or an inhuman amount of coffee.
But people like me can never, ever have enough sleep. No amount of caffeine can correct my body's natural inclination to slap the snooze button. And no amount of additional rest makes an impact. I do, after all, get awfully worked up by "Jeopardy!"
For a year in college, I decided that my body must be set to a 25-hour schedule. I found that if I were to indulge myself by sleeping in every day, each morning I would want to wake up another hour later. When allowed to continue over the course of a month I started waking at a reasonable hour again.
It was an amazing biological and scientific discovery. I still flunked biology.
To this day, waking remains an ordeal. All alarms are set three snooze-increments earlier than my desired waking time. My bus schedule is memorized, so I know when I absolutely have to wake up for the 8:04. Or the 8:27. Or the 9:15. Or maybe I'll just work from home today.
And with all this rationalization, I knew it would never get easier. So I decided to set a time and stick with it. Or, rather, the family addition decided for me.
The dog gets a walk every morning at 6 a.m. If I am tardy in waking, the dog lets me know. So far I have not been very tardy. And after a pre-dawn trek through the neighborhood, long before the distracting joggers are out or the other barking dogs are awake, I'm getting on with my day.
It isn't easy to wake up that early, and hasn't become easier over time. I get nice and heavy-lidded after lunch. And with all the walking, I don't really get much done that I might have otherwise. But I, of all people, am now an early riser.
Now, if I could only be an afternoon napper.
(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban and the easily amused. Contact him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)
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