A Personal History of Mornings

When I was a very little girl mornings were my favorite. It didn't matter what time I went to bed, I was up with the sun, happy, and hungry as can be. If you had happened to be in the apartment at 6am on any given day you would have heard a cheerful call of "I want crunchies, I WANT CRUNCHIES..." coming from my room. I had a daily love affair with breakfast, specifically cheerios, and crunchies was their name.

My mom was not a morning person, so as soon as my motor skills could handle it, she would put some milk in a small cream pitcher before going to sleep and leave it on a low shelf in the fridge so I could get my bowl of cereal, pour my own milk, and enjoy my breakfast while she got just a few more winks of sleep. I thoroughly enjoyed this time, I would eat my crunchies, though I probably no longer called them that, and then I would read (as small children do, looking at the pictures and remember the story their parents told them many times over), watch cartoons, or play with my barbies until she woke up.

When I was a little older still, motor skills fully functioning, I would pour my own cereal (and milk, straight from the carton) and then I would sit on the couch and read until my mom was awake. I was always happy in those quiet times. I had a book, and I had breakfast, let the others sleep through the morning. This was my time.

My grandpa and I bonded over our mornings when we were together. He would get up, look outside, talk about how it was going to be a nice day, and then go make some oatmeal for himself and some cereal for me. If we were at the lake house, we would sit out on the deck, watching for jackrabbits and other woodland creatures. If we were at their desert house, it was hummingbirds, and when breakfast was done, checking on watermelons or strawberries in the garden. I have so many great memories of him, but our mornings were my favorite. I was his early bird.

Then something changed, maybe hormones, maybe after seeing people sleep in and talk about how wonderful it was, I started to do it to. One day I woke up after staying at my grandma's house, thinking it was maybe 8am at the latest, it was 10am. I was excited (and probably a little nervous, my anxiety about doing things right started young). Finally I could do what others did. Little did I know that this would be the start of my battles with the morning.

My relationship with mornings ever since that fateful day, have changed. Through middle and high school sleep was my new thing. On weekends I would stay in bed as late as allowed. Maybe I was trying a new personality on for size, maybe I wanted to be more like other people. I don't know. But it has carried on to the current, and sadly, I think I've spent a greater portion of my life not being an early bird.

The mornings are something I wish I loved but have a hard time waking up for. I've been thinking, planning and lazily goaling to change back into a morning person. One that wakes up with time before work. Time to read, or write or maybe even work out (if I get really ambitious). I don't want to feel rushed but when the alarm goes off I just keep hitting snooze, hazily calculating the amount of time I will have to get ready. There's no time for reading or writing this way, there's barely even enough time to get properly ready! Something has to change.

These past few weeks I've been getting up earlier on a more consistent basis and I looking for ways to get more time. I've been going to sleep earlier most nights, never hitting past 12, rarely hitting past 11:15. I've been thinking of things that I have to get up for, this morning it was to turn off a slow cooker that I had started in the night, it had been cooking french toast and I had wondered how it would go. I don't have great reasons ever morning yet. Sometimes I still sleep until the last possible minute and then throw myself together and leave for work just making it on time. Those days don't feel as good. And I'm trying to remember that when the snooze button seems like the best option.

I want to get back to my early bird ways. I want to rise with, maybe even sometimes before, the sun and be happy about it. I want to eat my breakfast, write a few words, or maybe read a few, stretch and slowly introduce myself to the morning.  I want to feel productive, or at least calm before work so that after I'm not rushing to fit everything into my night. Baking, writing, reading, blog posting, watching Friday Night Lights, and who knows what else. That's what keeps me up late, the feeling that I still have more to do. I get inspired at night, by maybe that's just something I've trained myself to be, and it can be reversed again. Little things are coming together to make this happen. I get myself in bed by 10:30pm on good nights, I think of things to do in the morning so I don't press snooze until it's rush time and it also helps that the man friend goes to bed early during the week. By 930pm our conversations are done, so I have no distractions there.

I want to be an early bird again, I want to feel the peace of the morning daily. I think the morning has a lot more to offer me than the depths of night.

xoxo

photo credit: Frederic Poirot via photopin cc