am I REALLY a morning person?

I've always considered myself a morning person.  As a tot, tween, teen and beyond I've never been one to sleep in much, often to my mom's consternation in the tot and tween years.  I remember her dropping me off at sleep overs and warning the host mom that I was an early riser, which helped me feel like some kind weirdo about my morning perkiness.  It's not like when I was at sleepovers I'd get up and roam the family's house or raid the fridge or anything...I'd just lay there and make conspicuous noises and such, trying to awaken my friend.  Anyway - this tendency to awaken early has only increased and gotten earlier in the last 6 years or so, maybe related to the demise of my visits from Aunt Flo.

On the flip side of the day - I've also never had any trouble falling asleep at night.  I'm " a sleeping before my head hits the pillow" kind of gal and always have been.  "Early to bed, early to rise..." is the way I'm hard-wired, and I'm pretty happy about that. 

My difficulty these days is staying awake much past 8:30, and my snarky kids and husband would snicker at me claiming 8:30 as my witching hour. It's partially because I'm up well before the butt-crack of dawn everyday - think 4:30-4:45.  Unless I'm out at night doing something (other than sitting in a darkened theater watching a movie, which I don't do for this reason), I feel heaviness collect in my eyelids around 8, (okay, 7:30) compelling me to horizontilize myself, which signals a very short descent into the land of Morpheus.  This aspect of my Benjamin Franklin lifestyle is frustrating at times, because it's genuinely hard for me to make it up for a show that airs at 9 pm or later.  Starbux helps - tho I've been known to fall asleep without difficulty after a double shot latte at 5 p.m.!

Back in the days when I stayed up later, or half the night even, I still tended to wake up early.  And always, ALWAYS, I've been uber-productive and perky in the mornings.  Not crazed, not manic, just very productive.  Literally and figuratively.  Under the literal category, I get things done.  I have energy and don't mind countless trips down to the basement to throw in a load of clothes, then up 2 flights to put done clothes away.  Then back downto straighten up, do something related to the dinner hour that will inevitably come later, sort recycling, endless tasks that don't bother me one bit in the the morning.  Not one bit.

Alright then.  The #1 confounding aspect of being a morning person is that all these same tasks, regardless how simple, mindless or even appealing they were between 5 and 8 a.m. become way beyond my interest, ability or desire to perform once the clock inches past about 2:30 in the afternoon, which is the time I get off work each day.  Given my lengthy commute of 5 mintues, I enter through the kitchen door by 2:35, at which time the dog rouses himself from his 4th or 5th daily power nap to greet me, receive his babylove and remind me to take him for a walk.  For this I have energy and interest - even desire.  When it's freezing cold, my desire to trek more than a mile or so wanes, but generally the dog walk is a go.

After that - forget it.  Anything other than chores absolutely necessary to survival seems monumental or impossible at worst, expendable at best.  Even things I really wanted and planned to do that morning.  Planned and INTENDED to do.  Of course I can muster up the ooomph to jump into what I'd planned to do instead of an answering the call of the couch and my book, knitting or the remote control - but more often than not I don't.

Don't get me wrong - leisure engineering isn't a bad thing, and I don't harbor any notion I need to be productive every waking moment.  I can build in down time for myself with the best of 'em.  But it's frustrating to plan with all my heart to do something I want to do and needs to be done only find my bio-rhythms or some cosmic glitch renders me in need of a virtual kick in the ass to get into gear after my work day.  And this brings me to the #2 confounding aspect of being a morning person...the figurative part.

During my productive early mornings when I'm physically engaged in tasks and chores, my mind and soul are active as well.  I plan, desire and fervently intend to have a clean healthy day with food.  To meditate.  To not overeat, or binge.  Pray more.  Exercise.  I feel full of hope, enthusiasm and optimism that I can and will "live my best day"  (thanks, Oprah), and stay the course, keeping my desires for wholeness, health and abundant living at the front of my mind.

But as the day progresses beyond my work hours, just like the plan to scrub the toilets, my personal intentions and focus diminish.  I do great and follow my intentions until those late afternoon hours when I find it difficult to remember that I really don't love my body at its current weight; that I do want to have a clean, sugar free day; that I want to exercise, pray, meditate, tend to my soul...whatever.  This happens day after day, ad nauseum.  I think I could accept my tendency to not be able to engage in the planned household chores later in the day if I didn't also become murky and fuzzy about my plans for the less concrete but more important personal goals.

You all know AA uses the Serenity Prayer as one of its main tenets; "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."  There are things about myself I KNOW I can change.  I just need to remember I want to change them when I'm tired, lazy or unmotivated.  Or when something is gnawing at me from within that I'm not even aware of.  I need to remember that when I try to convince myself I don't really want what I know I'll want again tomorrow morning and definitely definitely wanted this morning, I still do want it and some unrealized emotion or struggle is trying to sabotage me.  I need to find a way to keep my intentions alive and on the front burner when I "forget" them temporarily.  This is a work in progress, like I am.

The good news is that I get a chance to revisit this each day.  Each day begins with a morning, and I am, afterall, a morning person.