Mornings (WFMAD Day 15)

(We have officially reached the halfway point for WFMAD! Woot!)

Mornings are the bane of my existence.

I'm not a fan of mornings. At all. I don't like getting up early, leaving the warm comfort of my bed and, you know, sleep, in exchange for having to stumble through a groggy state and actually be productive. Because let's face it: the only thing we ever want to do first thing in the morning is sleep, regardless of how many hours you've already gotten.

(Unless you're a hardcore morning person, in which case, you suck. No offense.)

The problem with mornings is that, without them, I get nothing done. During summer last year, and the year before (and probably the year before that), I developed a steady routine of sleeping in until noon every day, and staying up until 3 in the morning (normally watching anime or playing Sims). Aside from going to work and occasionally hanging out with friends, I got little to nothing done AT ALL, and it was the most frustrating thing ever.

I know what you're probably thinking. "Why, Justyne, if you wanted to get work done so badly, why didn't you start setting your alarm and going to bed earlier?" Well, smart guy, I tried. I set my alarm for 8. I set it for 9. I set it for 10. I had three alarms going off at one-hour intervals, hoping that at least one of them would get my sorry little ass out of bed.

Nope.

The thing you should realize is that there are two versions or sides to my personality. There is my normal, everyday, totally perky self, and my morning self.

The perky side of me is the one who is overly happy, always optimistic, who makes to-do lists and schedules and deadlines and who plans to go to bed by midnight and get up by 8:30 because hey, it's not so hard!

The morning side of me is the one who wrecks all of those plans by sleeping in three hours later than planned; whose first reaction when the alarm goes off is to hit the snooze and go back to sleep; who says, "Screw you, this is impossible" to the formerly optimistic plans made during the day.

It didn't matter what lengths I made to ensure that I wouldn't sleep in; I still would, without fail, until the day came when I had to start getting up at 6 am for school.

This year, though, things were different. I jumped into summer with the knowledge that I probably wouldn't be going back to school come September, and thus my one incentive to adapt a decent sleeping schedule would be null and void. I knew that this year, if I allowed myself to fall into my same old, messed up sleeping schedule, I would be stuck in that rut of unproductivity...forever.

(Okay, so maybe that's a bit dramatic. But we all know that I'd have a hard as hell time getting out of it again.)

So when I got home from PEI aaaaall the way back in April, I made a decision. A decision to get up at 8:30 am, every day. (Yes, even on Saturdays.)

I'll be the first to admit that I don't always follow through on this decision. Some days I sleep a little longer; some days a lot longer. Some days I wake up at 8:30, only to crawl back into bed and watch Netflix on my phone for a couple hours. (These days have been happening more and more frequently as of late.)

But for the most part, I've been pretty good about keeping my sleeping schedule intact. I've been good about not staying up too late (please ignore the fact that I posted this at one in the morning), and about starting my day BEFORE the sun reaches its highest point in the sky. I've been good about starting to get stuff done earlier, and as a result, have been getting more and more done during the day. My frustration is decreasing. And you know what?

I still hate mornings.


Until later,

- Justyne