Help!
My jet lag is deserting me. Eastbound jet lag sucks, but I love the westbound kind. It’s the only thing that makes me wake up early, unless you count having to pee, or leg cramps. I’m genetically programmed to sleep till at least 9.
I’m very defensive of my night-owl/ morning-sloth tendencies, because I don’t like how self-righteous morning people are.
“You missed the whole morning! The sunrise was so beautiful! Look, I already bought rare orange hydrangeas at the farmers market, but they’re all gone now.”
Oh really? Well you missed the night, and it was awesome. All the best infomercials were on, including one for the Purrfect Arch, which is a cat product (duh) that they should make for humans. Can you imagine – a structure in your own living room that can scratch all your itchy parts AND collect all the hair you shed so it doesn’t end up all over the house?
That’s the kind of creativity and inspiration that happens at night.
But I have to admit it:
I secretly, desperately want to be a morning person.
I get a glimpse of the life they have when my jet lag is fresh and propels me out of bed before 7.
Wow, the streets aren’t crowded yet!
I’ve got first crack at all the heirloom tomatoes!
An hour on Facebook before I’ve normally even started thinking about wasting time!
My coffee place just opened and smells like fresh-baked muffins and the line of moms after kindergarten drop-off aren’t here yet!
Sshhh! The junkies are still sleeping!
Look, they’re still setting up shop in my grocery store.
Dammit, why haven’t they put out the egg salad by now?
(Turns out that egg salad store wasn’t open yet. A guy tapped me on the shoulder, and, as I pulled out my headphones and turned around, I realized he’d been chasing me through the aisles and shouting to get my attention, but I hadn’t heard him over the Hot 97 morning show.)
I wish that phase could last. It always feels like it will.
It’s like when you recover from a stomach virus and no longer feel like you’re going to die, but still don’t have an appetite, and you think, “Now, I just eat for fuel. I no longer crave snacks. And this is the way it’ll be forever. World, meet the new me.”
Oh well.
Now you.
Are you a morning person, a wannabe morning person, or neither? Opinions on the whole thing?
TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS
(Unless you’re going to tell me that the secret is going to bed early. Got it.)
I’m (still) reading through the older posts, and not sure I’ll get an answer to this… but why was the guy chasing you down through the store?
I’m so curious as to what was so urgent that he persisted in his mission to speak to you!
I am definitely a morning person, I used to be a 6am kinda girl, which was great, but then my son made me a 5am person…he can now sleep in until 10am…I can’t. I can get more done between 5am-10am, than I would ever manage from 10am-10pm. After 3pm I’m pretty much done, that’s when I have a coffee and my words don’t make sense;) I only stay up until 10pm because my kids go to bed at 9:30pm and I think it is the right thing to do as a parent…make sure they are asleep before me.
I am definitely a morning person, waking up around 5:30-6:00 to play words with friends, read the Sunday NY Times, or just pick at my toenails. Oh, and Happy Anniversary, adopted niece. We need to talk about your parents’ apartment sometime! Stay tuned!
I have always been a night owl. Despite my attempts at following “good sleep hygiene” (a judgey term, which feels invented only to create icky shame). When I had kids, everyone told me my body clock would adjust, and I would seemlessly fall in to a routine wherein I would never wake past 6am and be asleep long before The Daily Show. It didn’t. In any way. 13 years later and I still stay up past 2am most nights. If left to my own devices, I will sleep past noon and stay up all night. But I do get up at 6am with my kids, but I’m always groggy, impatient and generally of little use to anyone. My inner clock got stuck in college, and doesn’t appear to become unstuck anytime soon. I am so envious of all you normal sleepers. I feel like a meth addict (I am not a meth addict, just a tv whore). Hopefully this pitifull admission made you feel better about your mornings? Or just generally sad. Glad I could share my useful tips & wisdom.
I never heard the term “sleep hygiene.” That’s totally early-bird-normative and makes me feel dirty for waking up when I do, even if I just changed the sheets. Which I don’t do often enough, and maybe that’s rightfully an example of poor sleep hygiene.
I wonder if your inner clock got stuck way earlier, like by living just blocks from school. I think mine did. I blame 450 WEA.
BTW, I have often spent my meth head hours googling “meth heads.” The movie Spun had a great message board, where they’d congregate to discuss recipes, The Meth Life, and how their teeth were still perfectly fine even if they had no eyebrows. Thought you’d like that info.
I have to say and admit that I’m not a damn morning person.
I’m a night owl.
Although I can fake being a morning person.
Does that count? (I fake it because I get paid to be a teacher by day with little kiddies walking by saying: “Hi Miss” for the 10th time while I grasp my tim’s coffee secretly wishing I was home in bed with my 70 pound boxer).
I am awake past 9 p.m. I have no minions by my side yet (children except for a 70 pound boxer who stares at me when he needs food and walks for his pee and pooping grounds).
Yay for sharing!
That does count. If you can fake it, you’re halfway there.
Don’t you feel good that they all call you “Miss” and not “Ma’am”?
God no!! I am a night owl through and through. And I have no Morning Person envy whatsoever. They usually crash by 7 p.m. when I’m just getting started. I LOVE the night!!
Now what can we do about getting one of those Purrrfect Arches for humans!!??
I totally relate, morning person envy is real. I am one and those times when I am not I get disappointed that I missed out on my morning productivity. I have a glorious secret to reset the body to being a morning person that I’ll tell you after I share what I do in the morning because I always wonder what other people do in the mornings? I read your post in bed. I am still in bed actually. I crave a slow wake up and AM procrastination sesh or maybe not procrastination… where I catchup on current events (patrol my Facebook newsfeed), respond to important emails (like this one), and I think about and organize my day in my head (read my horoscope app). After that I drink tea or a smoothy and do a light yoga practice.
My tip to reset your sleep schedule is one I learned in college. The night before you want to wake up early you hang out with your friends or yourself I suppose and get super intoxicated. You dance your heart out to workout maximizing your productivity. After your drunk wears off in your sleep, you’ll wake up thirsty, nice and early. Bada-bing, bada-boom. Follow up with hot yoga to detox.
You’re welcome.
Welcome back. Have nothing witty to say. Too early (11:03 a.m.).
Licia – I SO look forward to the life of an 85 year old. My husband is 78 (ya we’re a May/December thing. I tell people “He married me for my money and I married him for the sex) and there are two things that will get him out of bed early: 1. a flight somewhere 2. a day trip to Princess Auto with his buddies.
For those not in the know, Princess Auto is a Costco-sized store with guy things like trailer hitches and hydraulic thingies and sausage grinders (for the hunters). The off-gassing smell hits you as soon as you walk in – kinda like the smell of potpourri and dried flowers when you walk into a Michael’s Craft Store. I guess that’s the female equivalent of Princess Auto. Anyway, we are constantly late for morning doctor’s appointments, we would never get to the Heirloom tomatoes before noon at the farmer’s market, and his “routine” takes just under 2 hours (full cooked breakfast, toilet time, bathing, dressing, dawdling) that it’s like herding a 3 year old. I’m not a super early morning person (like people who get up at 4:30 to meditate…geezus beezus) but I like to be mobilized before the double digits. BRING ON THE 80’S I say!!
I’m sorry, I meant to say that his commute would be sixteen hours, not eight.
But why are all these comments posted four hours into the future? Do they have jet lag too?
Ha! I hadn’t noticed that. I guess they’re caught somewhere over the Atlantic. They should really start posting before I’ve even hit publish.
I once wanted to write a screenplay about a morning person with an incredibly long commute. He would wake up at 4:30 AM, drive to the airport, get on a pane to the west coast, take a taxi to Union Station, take a train to the mountains, take a bus to a village where he would mount a burro that would take him up a lonely trail to his place of work, a Taco Bell. At this point, the movie would be at the two hour mark. He would punch his card in the time clock and the boss would say to him in the movie’s first line of dialogue, “Jensen, you’re five minutes late. This is the third time this week. You’re fired!” The end. The sequel would show his eight hour commute home and would end with him reading the want ads as his wife, in the sequel’s first line of dialogue would say “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Wanted” to write it? You just did, right here in the comments! And it’s brilliant. Let’s get a kickstarted going. It should play only at that mountaintop Taco Bell, and only at 7 am – and if you’re late, you don’t get let in.
Well, if it’s only going to play at that one theater, the ticket price should be a thousand dollars.
Also, I forgot to mention that this Taco Bell is in a town where the minimum wage is eleven hundred dollars and fifty cents an hour, the so the cost of the daily commute is almost worth it.
Since I was “hashtag blessed” with a late sleeping kid I don’t have the mom early morning thing and I am very judged by other moms and I judge myself and soon we will all start judging Levi. For me, the real problem is that as I age I am still not a morning person but I am someone who can’t sleep late anymore so now I am a tired-cranky-bitchy-still get out of bed until the very last minute- person.
It makes me so happy when I come over late morning and Levi isn’t even up yet. In that moment, I’m less alone on the planet. I will never judge him.
I feel for him. He’s got many years of having to get up unnaturally early for school ahead of him. It’s so wrong.
And thank god for you. Even though you do yoga before I’ve done anything other than brush my teeth, if that.
I am a morning person now because of my damn children. Those creatures have a set body alarm that wakes them up every morning at 6:15am.
Sleeping in for us is 7:00am and I am always so happy when that happens.
I live the life of an 85 year old.
xoxo
I remember when I used to jump out of bed at 5 and stare at the TV test pattern till Little Rascals came on.
So clearly I was born a morning person. I guess all kids are. But when and why did that go away?