What is your peak time of mental alertness and achievement?
Many of you will grumble as I shout out: I adore waking early in the day! Although I need a totally dark room when I crawl into bed at night, in the morning as light begins seeping in around the edges, I start to stretch and smile and think, Oh wow, God gave me another one.
~~That’s most mornings, so you don’t hate my a.m. enthusiasm, I’ll admit there are those other days when what I want is to stuff the pillow over my eyes and wait until somehow a latte magically appears on the nightstand.~~
Life is tough for a morning person. You’re ecstatic from the moment you roll out of bed, feet hitting the floor, brain whirling with every possibility the day holds. The smell of freshly brewed coffee reaches your olfactory sense and you say, “Yes, life is good,” marveling that you get a new day to dive into another project or have a grand adventure.
Except this attitude of delight doesn’t work if you’re married to or otherwise surrounded by non-morning people. Then trouble can ensue. My husband and I met through work and he forbade me (he was not alone in this mandate) from speaking to him before ten-thirty or his third cup of coffee, whichever came first. After sixteen years, I’ve shrunk that to letting him finish one cup before I launch into any of my random, brilliant thoughts.
Everything is conceivable with daybreak
The world is full of the possible when the sun is rising. The day starts to unfold the same way as opening a book you like to re-read. You might have an inkling of what’s coming, but you don’t remember the details and so it’s fresh for you.
I don’t know when this dawn-love began. It wasn’t who I was as a teenager, groaning, and snapping at Mom and siblings. We’d slowly meander into the kitchen for breakfast before school, moaning over whatever food was there that I liked yesterday, but today held zero appeal.
As a college freshman in the dorms I was voted, “lightest sleeper,” on the floor. I hated eight o’clock classes. Unfortunately, the room I shared with Randi the first half of the year and Jeri the second half of the year (they were night-owls) was at the top of the stairwell. Girls would come in late, slam the door against the wall, laugh, and carryon as they made their way to their rooms. I’d whip open our door at three in the morning and scream at them. “Shut up!” Yes, they laughed at me, as did my easily nodding off roommates, and we’d all go back to sleep.
When did this delight in mornings take over my life and decide not to leave? Perhaps when I lived in California circa the late eighties. It could have been the temperate weather of Whittier that launched the love of mornings. Not awakening to cold floors under my eager feet or the sounds of a furnace clicking on could have made it easier to get out of bed. The three years I lived there, I used to rise at five-thirty so I had time to bake chocolate chip cookies to take into the office.
Relocating changes us
When I left California and moved to Montana, I’m sure it was the amazing sunrises touched with shades of orange and red that motivated me to crawl out from under the soft covers. My first house was along the Yellowstone River in a relatively flat area. The sun shows morning and evening were encompassing in their depths of colors and the promises of what a day might bring, or a sigh of contentment the perfect ending provided.
My last house in Montana had a view of the Beartooth Mountains. I also had a hot tub and if there’s another great way to start a brisk winter morning besides tiptoeing through the snow and dunking into the steamy, still water, I don’t know what it could be. I’d soak, listening to the critter chatter and busy birds in the trees around me and watch as the sky moved from the dark of night into the variety of sunrise shades and fully into dawn.
From college graduation to relocations across the country and back again, it became clear: I love mornings. I love mornings. I love mornings.
By eight-thirty in the evening, I’m waning. After nine, I’m nearing incoherence. By ten, tuck me in because talking to me is useless. At my magical hour of five-thirty in the morning, I’m back with the land of the living and ready to go again.
Therein lies the problem.
I love mornings so much and have such an onslaught of energy the moment I’m vertical that I want to do EVERYTHING as soon as I arise.
What to do, what to do!
- Read the Bible (Spirituality is a great way to start a day, isn’t it?)
- Write (Work on the second mystery.)
- Do a bit more writing (That collection of essays won’t produce themselves.)
- Write (Gotta generate blogs for my site and Medium.)
- Exercise (I started morning exercising the winter of the broken almost-collarbone-bone in Montana 1993. The only time that changed is when I joined a gym and went after work to burn off the stress of a day in corporate America.)
- On weekends, visit with my husband (this is especially nice in the summer when we can chat on the deck. Frequently he states: Calm down, it’s too early. I’m not awake. Don’t you have work to do?)
- Write (Emails! I love to harass my sleepyhead friends by filling up their inboxes while they’re still drooling on their pillows.)
Such a list!
First, I write. Jackie nudges me to finish the (first: Murder the Canalucci Creamery) second (Death of Alon Chasdiel) of what I plan to be three Cosmic Cold Cases of Pittsburgh mysteries because she believes the stories are great fun that can find an agent and a publisher. Thank you, Jackie.
Second, I email the people I didn’t respond to the previous evening.
Third, I exercise.
Fourth, back to writing until late afternoon when I read others’ blogs and catch up on Medium and other social media. Even when I worked in corporate, by four p.m., my brain was ready for the least difficult tasks of the job: filing, reading emails, making calls.
See, I can discipline myself, with great effort, to follow a plan that starts with morning joy and spreads throughout a day.
What about you, my friends? I know some of you have peak time at 11:30 in the evening, others are morning folks like me. How do you take advantage of your peak times?
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Read: Do you make your bed?
I’ll stick with evenings, dear Auntie….I cannot keep up with you in the mornings!!!
We learned that in Wales, didn’t we? Zoom, snore, zoom, snore. HA HA
Hi Rose Mary. My peak time for production and creativity is between 11 am and 5 pm. I get up around 7:30 am and read/delete the multitude of e-mails I receive, then have breakfast and do any mundane chores I need to get done. And then I’m ready to sit down at my computer and get on with writing or marketing my business. Evenings are meant for relaxing and a glass of wine. 🙂
I’m enjoying how different we all are, Doreen. If I don’t roll out of bed and start writing, I feel like I’ve lost a day! We do–wholeheartedly–agree on evenings being meant for wine!
Till my college days, I was always an owl but now my job shifts forced me to be a morning person, but sooner I realised being a morning person is such an advantage. Waking up early provides plenty of time for the gym, exercise, walks, exploring yourself and I can do the number of stuff in weekdays only for which earlier I used to wait for weekends because night means markets are shut. The most important advantage I feel is – it keeps me organized.
There was a brief period in life when I stayed up until 1:00am and got up at 6:00. I’d clean, bake, read–who knows where that night owl came from, but she didn’t stick around long, Tushita. Like you, I’m all about the mornings and have been for years.
I enjoyed reading your tales of living on college campus. You are so animated that I could actually picture the scene. I am sure those days are a distant memory. It is amazing that people can be so inconsiderate; ariving home early hours of the morning and speaking at the top of their voices and banging doors is disrespectful. It is probably a good thing I commuted throughout my university years. I just could not comprehend sharing a bathroom with others.
I am a night owl but I still wake early for my commute to work. I am usually up by 6am, some days 5.30am. These days waking at 8am is a lay in whereas this would have felt like utter torture as a teenager.
The gals on my dorm floor used to make furious fun of me! Bathroom sharing is still at the bottom of my list! With your commute, Phoenicia, I don’t know how you stay awake late–and you get all sorts of work done in your evening!
I have always been a morning person. A cup of coffee and I’m ready to go. I inherited this trait from my Dad – I’m sure of it!!
Hm, I think my Dad was also a morning person. Probably from having to get up early for work for 40 years. He loved sitting on the back porch, just watching the world wake up. He had a unique way of tossing the last dregs in his cup over the side of the rail…
Here’s to lots more mornings for all of us! (And here’s to missing our Dads.)
Hey, just wanted to say hi and how much I am enjoying your emails. Just had to also tell you that I saw your sister last week at a yard sale….had fun talking with her. And last, but not least, your comment on the Montana hot tub brought back memories….after we bought it from you, we had it eight wonderful years…miss it yet!! Thanks….have a great day and keep on writing!!
P.S. I am not a morning person, but Dave is…how about that!!
Ah, yes, the hot tub…I am so glad it went to a good home! Ritter Swan moves about our house. Today he moved from near the front door to the living room. I was worried about vibrations from the roofers knocking him askew. I thought to myself: I wonder how the Ritters are? And there you are…letting me know you read my blogs (thank you, Donna!) and that you’re well. I miss seeing your wonderful smiles.
I used to work with non-morning people who would say: Don’t speak to me until after 10:30. You would also say that, eh? 🙂
Hey, just a quick note…..sure do enjoy your blogs. Also, I am not one of those don’t speak to me until after 10:30, up at 7 am and after coffee….ready to go!!
Glad you are enjoying the swan…..you should see all the “birds that fly through my living room” until they find a new home!!!!
In that case, good morning, Donna!
Glad the birds are still flying. Swan is currently in the kitchen–he just fits on the granite backsplash!
It’s mornings for me, too!
Somehow, darling, I would have guessed that!
I used to be a morning person but in the last year, that has changed. I’m lucky if I get to my office by 830 or 9 where I used to be there between 5 and 530 EVERY day. Seems to be working for me, too. I stay up much later than my previous bedtime of 9pm…now I mosey in around 11 or 1130 so it all works out. 🙂
Once upon a long time ago, I was both a morning and an evening person. I would stay up until 1:00 and get up at 6:00. Where is that woman now when I have so much more to do and so much less time to do it in?
Glad you are balancing out so well!