Oh Good Grief, I am a Morning Person

[puppetmaker]

I prided myself for years on my nocturnal habits. I was a creature of the night. It was useful in my career as a stage manager among others. But now I seem to be a morning person. I wake up and can get more done in the first three hours of my day than I seem to be able to the rest of the day.

Case in point, this morning I woke up about 7. I got up and went into the kitchen to take care of Fig. Fed Fig and cleaned up the kitchen including the dishwasher exchange clean for dirty. Got Treat his medicine and fed him. Pulled a load of laundry out of the dryer, put the last load for this week in the dryer, folded all the clothing and put them away. Got Caroline ready for school, repacked her backpack, remembered to put a note in her folder telling the teacher that I will be picking her up from school. Made coffee. Got Caroline to the bus. And now I am typing this entry.

After I finish this, I have a couple of things I might do depending on how the spirit moves me.

The only downside is that I tend to fade out about between 11:00pm and midnight if not a little earlier. Staying up late doesn’t work for me anymore. I guess I am headed for fogeydom. If needed I can still push beyond that time but I really pay for it on the backend.

The upside is that the schedule my body is on is the one that works the best for the life I have today. I need to be up for Caroline in the morning. I need to get things done during daylight hours more than I need the ability to stay up all night until the sunrise. It was a useful skill to have but I now bid it adieu and embrace my morning person rather than threatening it with serious bodily harm.

I am grateful that my body seems to work out when I need to be awake.

Comments

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Speaking from the lofty heights of fogeydom I'm here to tell you it's not so bad. You just learn to listen to your body more carefully and try to give it what it needs. You've got the right attitude. Just keep on doin' what you're doin'.

[norda.livejournal.com]

I'm finding the same things about myself lately.

I don't FEEL like a fogey, but I acknowledge that my white-tornado-ness between 5AM and 10PM does not have quite the cool-factor cachet of my old nightclubby/writerly ways of awake-at-4PM-crash-at-3AM.

[reddheart.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, even when I had more late-night tendencies, I still got fairly tired by around 2AM.

But the thing that has always been a factor with me is that in order to stay up way late, something needed to really be engaging me. It's why I can stay up until 2AM at a convention or while beating the clock on deadlines, but I get sleepy at 11PM on more "normal" times.

The thing that has changed more for me is when I can wake up after those things and not feel horridly deprived. I need a good five to six hours of fairly uninterrupted sleep a night, so if I go to bed at 2, I really should not set the alarm before 7, and if I need to be up at 6, I shouldn't go to bed after about 1. Otherwise, I will likely need to powernap at some point, and I don't like to powernap unless I have to.

I also have found that breakfast, of some sort, can really help when it comes to waking me up. And we're talking -real- breakfast, with proteins and such, not just a Starbucks run (though I can get away with that). I did this for when we spent almost all night working on things for the Cherry Blossom Festival this year, and while I couldnt' eat -all- of it (nerves, of all things), it was worth every penny of the room service charge.

[popfiend.livejournal.com]

I was born fogey-ish.

Welcome to the club.

Now go shoo those kids off your lawn.

[imafarmgirl.livejournal.com]

I find myself coming to the same realizations. On one hand aging sucks, on the other it's fine if you just embrace it.