Am I...A Morning Person???
Or the very specific rules for (not) interacting with me before 9am
I didn’t post last week because a lot has been happening.
After spending my unemployed time publishing and promoting The Way It’s Supposed to Be, we went to Cozumel as a family, AND I finally got a full-time job as a content specialist. So instead of stressing over sticking points about book promotion and trying to get the newsletter out, I decided to spend my last unemployed weekend chilling. I hung out in the neighbor’s pool, finished reading a book and stayed up late bonding with Jason. It felt like a fitting segue to fully-employed life, which turns out, since it’s remote, is pretty flexible and awesome.
Here I sit, Friday morning just before 8am.
I’m on my couch, legs crossed, laptop perched on pillow. I always appreciate this time. No one else is up, the house is quiet, save the hum of the refrigerator. I can see chickadees landing on the bird feeder in the backyard and hear the variety of Central Texas birds chirping and cooing. I feel calm and centered in this stillness. The cicadas have not yet begun to scream; I guess they aren’t morning bugs. Or maybe they are. Maybe they are quiet because they feel the serenity of morning, too. Or am I over-anthropomorphizing bugs who only live through one mating cycle if they’re lucky? Probably. It’s only 79 degrees outside…for now.
I have never been a morning person.
My mom used to tell me, “April, you are going to have to learn to drink coffee,” when she got me up for kindergarten. I have always been slow to wake up. But I’m realizing lately, it’s not so much getting up early that sticks in my craw as it is what I can do with that time. (As long as it’s light outside. Getting up in the dark = It’s the middle of the night = I should be horizontal in bed.)
From the time I started school all the way through my first several jobs after college, the weekday rule was “Get Up and Go.” And because I taught school for a lot of those years, sometimes that getting up was indeed in the dark. I needed precisely 25 minutes to get dressed, brush my teeth, eat breakfast and pour my coffee in a travel mug. I performed some version of that routine for 27 years of my life. Then, I had kids, which meant no peaceful wake-up-slow mornings in the foreseeable future.
Every day that I have not had a job to Get Up and Go to, since my kids have gotten old enough to sleep later than me, I have been actively, consciously grateful for the stillness of morning. For not having to put on work clothes right out of bed. For not having to pack my lunch. For not having to whisk myself out of the house with an armload of supplies for the day, nary to return for ten hours. For no one talking to me and asking me for breakfast before my brain is awake.
Side Note: Here’s a related bit on waking up at ungodly hours and turning into my parents:
It turns out, I can do mornings in a very specific way.
I like to wake up and lie in bed for a while. Then, I wander downstairs, make coffee, open the blinds and sit and stare out the window until I feel ready to write or work or whatever. If I have a day that, for some reason, I do have to Get Up and Go, it just makes the next day when I don’t all the sweeter. BUT if my morning serenity gets unexpectedly interrupted, say, by a kid who decides to come down and turn on the TV at 8:30am, woe to that child. If looks or heavy-handed sighs could kill…
Granted, once school starts, it doesn’t exactly work this way. I get up with the kids because I like to be with them while they do their version of Get Up and Go. Sometimes, I drive carpool. Then, once they’re launched for the day, I do my sitting and staring on the couch with coffee.
Here is the great thing about modern, remote work.
My morning routine doesn’t have to change much. I still don’t have to Get Up and Go. I can work from my home office, my couch, even my bed if I want. If I have video conference meetings, I just have to make sure I’m decently clothed from the shoulders up. I don’t have to pack up and worry I’ve forgotten something I won’t see again until I return home after 5pm. When I get tired of sitting at my desk, instead of wandering the halls in search of coworkers to bug or spending an inordinate time hiding in the bathroom, I take a break to water my plants outside or empty the dishwasher. I like that.
There are downsides to remote work, of course. You have to make more of an effort to get to know your coworkers. And home life can be distracting when the family is all here, out in the living room talking, and I am in my office trying to edit something. But those are manageable things. The flexibility and simplicity of working from home — the fact that it overcomes one of my biggest beefs with full-time employment, the Get Up and Go — makes it so worth it.
In the end, I guess I am a morning person…
…as long as I don’t have to get dressed and go anywhere. As long as I have coffee. As long as you don’t talk to me. As long as I get to stare out the window. As long as there are birds to watch…You know what, never mind. For your own sake, you best just assume I’m not a morning person.