My New Years Resolution is to no longer try to be a morning person.
It’s not that I haven’t given it the old college try… well, not actually while in college… but I have as an adult.
Nor is it that I don’t particularly like morning people. It’s just that they are way too morning-y for me and they are always doing things in the morning… like talking to me.
My wife is a morning person and I really like her. Except she’s always trying to talk to me early in the morning when we’re both awake. It will be 6:00 am and I’ll be desperately tightening down the tourniquet on my arm for the coffee drip, and she’ll expect me to be able to process difficult and complicated questions like “do you think we should remortgage the house to help pay for college next year, especially since interest rates are hovering in the low single digits?” or “Good morning, how are you?”
I’m not sure she chooses to be a morning person, she just has to get up really early, but somehow once she’s up, she becomes a morning person. There’s probably some kind of complicated common-core math formula that explains how morning people end up marrying non-morning people.
Me, on the other hand, I’ve been trying to be a morning person ever since I can remember having to get up early to the sound of a blaring alarm clock. I don’t typically wake up before about 8:00 am when I let natural sleep take its course. But most weekdays I try to get up between around 6:00-6:30 am. So, if my common core math is right, that’s about two and seven-twelfths to three and four-fifths hours of totally unnatural awake time.
But there’s something glamorous and romantic about the idea of being a morning person, effortlessly getting up at the crack of dawn to work out, or sipping coffee in quiet solitude while you blog or catch up on emails or meditate while the rest of the lowly, unproductive world slumbers away.
Plus, there’s all those articles that pop-up into our Facebook feeds proclaiming how very successful people get up early and get lots accomplished before the sun comes up. People like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and even Ben Franklin and probably lots of successful authors… all morning people.
6:00 am: June 15, 1752
Ben Franklin (to his wife): “Good morning, how are you? Boy, you look electric this morning!”
Deborah Read Franklin: “Ugh, go fly a kite!”
For years, I’ve had it in my mind that someday I would evolve naturally into a morning person. My mother, when she was alive, was a morning person. She’d get up at crazy hours… mostly because she couldn’t sleep… and accomplish all kinds of stuff with a great attitude and a big bright smile on her face. I probably shouldn’t hope for an insomnia problem, but I always envied that ability in her and figured maybe there would be some kind of genetic factor that would eventually kick in.
But alas, at 48 years old, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s likely just not going to happen.
So, starting in 2016 I will no longer try to be a morning person.
My only concern is, I’m not really a late night person either. I like to be in bed around 10:00 pm. I guess I’m more of a middle of the day person, that’s when I tend to be most productive. But that’s okay because if my common-core math is right that adds up to just about the perfect amount of medically recommended sleep.
And we all know how important getting nine and seven-sixths hours of sleep is each night.
How about you? Morning, noon or night?
The Brown Road Chronicles 