Confessions of a Night Owl

“Morning people seem to wake up happy”. I make that statement boldly but without a shred of evidence to substantiate my claim. My biased judgment is born of envy and awe for those more qualified to face the morning with heads held high and excitement for the day ahead. As for me, the morning is filled with the terror that only a fellow nocturnal creature could fathom. The illusion of control is lost the moment my eyes open and I know the day is off to its wild and furious start without my consent.

Anticipating the shock of daylight filling the dawn sky reduces me to the lowest of standards. I set the clock forward in the hopes of fooling myself into thinking it’s later than it is. I set multiple alarms around my room to maximize the number of times that I can hit snooze . Even at my age I must select the clothes I will wear and prepare my coffee pot in the evening while my faculties are still capable of calculating the challenges of navigating a new day.

I catch myself whispering words of encouragement to the reflection in the mirror, coaxing a splash of water to my face before I retreat back to bed with my first cup of steaming hot coffee. Yet again, I find that I need just a little more time before I embark on the next stage of wakefulness.

People such as myself tend to err on the side of caution. We frequently turn to jobs that require very little of us in the hours before noon. We gravitate to hotel and restaurant work, we become nurses, firefighters, taxi drivers, work graveyard shifts or in some cases turn to the unthinkable… we become artists.

Art by its very nature should not have to be a nighttime activity, but ask anyone who’s ever spent endless hours waiting for a creative spark to ignite new work and many will tell you that the inspiration will come much later than expected. Writers block produces an excruciating vindictiveness which may only be alleviated at the oddest hours and in the most inconvenient of locations. The ticking of the clock seems to be the only motivator which will force me into the dreaded world of post-production photography, otherwise known as “editing”,

My internal clock has not surrendered easily but necessity eventually won out over desire when my work life required that I take a job with a mid-morning start time. The greatest shock of all came when I accepted a job as a 6 am yoga instructor but that was the price of admission into a new industry. In a surprising turn of events I discovered the joy of watching the sun rise as I drove to work in the mornings and have enjoyed a myriad of new experiences by spending time with those of you that belong to the dawn.

I confess that my journey has been that of a tourist into your world of early morning cheerfulness but the passport of necessity has allowed me the grace to stay tethered there until the onset of our new world order. Shelter in place has set me back to the familiar and natural cadence of my old patterns. Water always seeks its own level and I am once again faced with surges of late night energies. I love the slow movement towards my first cup of coffee and I have reverted to opening the blinds in calculated stages. My ingrained proclivity for dismissing the alarm has returned and I am rarely, if ever, dressed for a workout before noon.

I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it will be when I have to reprogram my circadian rhythm to conform to the diurnal activities that will be expected of me when I return to work but for now there is is no point in torturing myself. I am simply NOT a morning person and there’s no point in faking it. In the infamous and poignant words of Popeye the Sailor Man … “I am what I am”.