It\u2019s 730 in the morning. I\u2019ve been up since 630, caffeinated since 715, and will absolutely be ready to eat lunch before noon. The sun is shining, the sky is bright, and it\u2019s cool enough to need a hoodie with the windows open. Work hasn\u2019t exhausted me and I\u2019m not depleted from hours of Twitter.<\/p>\n
I think I like mornings.<\/p>\n
Which is a weird admission to make if Rise and Grind™ culture makes you want to sit in an empty bathtub and sob. By nature, (and by choice because I\u2019m difficult) I hate morning culture and a healthy portion of morning people. I don\u2019t think you\u2019re a hero for choosing to work out when I\u2019m still asleep, and I don\u2019t think you or I or anybody is inherently \u201cbetter\u201d for being a person who works best shortly after the sun rises. Morning culture makes me tired. I group it with clean eating (don\u2019t get me started) and cleanses (woof) and hashtags that imply how into get-it-done productivity you are. We get it: you\u2019re an employed person. So are a lot of people. And some are better at afternoons, and others start working at 10 p.m. I love work and working and talking about work, but I\u2019m also a ghoul. Which is the only answer there is to why I suddenly like mornings.<\/p>\n
Like every person who lived through it, I assume winter 2019 was cursed. It was dark and cold and gross, and by March I was so desperate for natural light I began watching TV shows set exclusively in the summer (and by \u201cshows\u201d I most certainly mean Top Chef<\/em>). I usually woke up around 8, looked out the window, and then jumped out of bed only to drop to my knees like Willem Dafoe in Platoon<\/em>. It was a marathon of suckage.<\/p>\n But then things began to shift. The clocks sprung forward, and the sun started rising earlier. I could hear birds chirping outside, and I\u2019d begun sleeping with the window open. Over the course of the spring and early summer, I started waking up earlier and earlier — but I still went to bed early enough that I wasn\u2019t existing on three or four or five hours of sleep. On top of this, I\u2019d started taking the SSRIs I should\u2019ve been on years ago, and instead of white-knuckling through bedtime and daytime and all and every time(s), I slowly started to exhale. Don\u2019t get me wrong: I\u2019m still a high-strung freak (and a shout-out to my fellow freaks), but the feeling that mornings were an impending threat \u2013 as opposed to a fresh start \u2013 had morphed from a scream to an echo. Now I look forward to them because they expect nothing from me.<\/p>\n So now here we are. I wake up at 630 without an alarm. I spend a few minutes on my phone before making coffee. I sit down at my computer and scroll and read and start typing. I\u2019m usually hungry for lunch at a time normally reserved for my kindred spirits, senior citizens. Because I\u2019m freelance and insufferable, I\u2019ll usually take an afternoon nap. And then I\u2019ll work or clean or run errands and see my pals at night. I don\u2019t rise and grind because I don\u2019t even know what that means anymore. (We\u2019re all just scrambling to pay rent, right?) I get up and sit side by side with the sunlit proof that the world has kept going and I\u2019m allowed to go along with it. I write, psyched to realize that I might even work a little better in the mornings because there\u2019s nothing to distract me from what I\u2019m supposed to do. I look outside and see \u201creal\u201d morning people jogging and speed-walking and hustling to their hearts\u2019 content, and even though they aren\u2019t my people, I try to soak up all the alive-ness before we hunker down for another million months and vow that next year, we\u2019ll all buy sunlamps.<\/p>\n But maybe more importantly, I spend time with this version of myself I didn\u2019t think would ever exist; the one who gets to see the dew on the lawn and see the bunnies make their last rounds before laying low for the day. The one who is productive and obsessed with work still, yes (because I am Satan), but who\u2019s stopped using up-and-at-them productivity as a litmus test for professional or personal worth. Because I don\u2019t have time for that shit in the mornings. I have writing to do and outside to look at. I finally feel like I\u2019ve found the time and place to quietly exist and breathe. Plus, as I sit sipping my instant coffee and Instant Breakfast, I don\u2019t want to seem so thirsty for \u201cthe grind.\u201d I refuse to embarrass myself in front of the bunnies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s 730 in the morning. I\u2019ve been up since 630, caffeinated since 715, and will absolutely be ready to eat lunch before noon. The sun is shining, the sky is bright, and it\u2019s cool enough to need a hoodie with the windows open. Work hasn\u2019t exhausted me and I\u2019m not depleted from hours of Twitter. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67426,"featured_media":117322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64591],"tags":[83613,68215,83292],"class_list":["post-117321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wellness","tag-anne-t-donahue-musings","tag-katherine-mcphee","tag-top-story"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n