I’ve come to realize there are two kinds of people in this world. There are morning people and everyone else. For most of my adult life I worked jobs with early shifts, so my average wake-up time was probably around 5:30 a.m. Back then I’d creep into the office before the sun, fluorescent lights humming, subsisting on coffee, green tea, and protein bars, and praying the corporate gods would be kind to me for the next eight to nine hours.
When I walked away from my desk job in 2017 to write full-time, one of the things I looked forward to most was throwing away the dreaded alarm clock and sleeping until the sun was high enough to make me feel deep and genuine shame. I daydreamed about long, decadent mornings. Maybe an early morning yoga session, or a slow coffee while the rest of the world slogged through traffic. Well, let me tell you, those glorious later wake-ups lasted all of about two weeks. It was around then that my internal alarm locked in anywhere between 6:00-6:30am and it has stayed there ever since. It was like some blue-collar ghost of Christmas past that refused to stop haunting me. No snooze button, no just ten more minutes, just eyes that popped open at around the same ungodly minute. I normally wake up chipper, ready to tick off whatever tasks lie ahead.
I come from a long line of people who punched clocks and packed lunches, so early rising is probably buried deep within my DNA somewhere between the compulsive need to arrive at appointments fifteen minutes early and the nightly ritual of laying out tomorrow’s clothes. There’s also the inherited urge to check the weather before bed, to make sure the coffee is ready to go, and to feel a vague sense of moral superiority if you’re the first one awake in the house. I don’t think you can quite call it ambition. It’s more like muscle memory from generations passed who knew that if you weren’t already moving by dawn, there’s a good chance someone else was going to take what was yours.
I love mornings. There's an unexplainable kind of magic in the world as it's waking. The quiet, the peace, the cooler summer air still free of tailpipe exhaust and the collective sighs of people who prefer to hit the snooze button. There’s something almost sacred about those first few hours of daylight. Before the world gets too peopley and starts performing its daily pantomime of productivity. The light of dawn is softer, the streets are empty, and for a brief moment you can almost trick yourself into believing the planet hasn’t completely lost its freaking mind. In the early morning you can hear your own thoughts without the static. You can savor flavors, sights, and sounds. You can exist without having to explain yourself to anyone.
Some would call us morning people too tightly wound. To each his own, but where they see uptight, I see productivity. We’re the ones already three tasks deep while the rest of the world is still drooling on their pillows. We’re not wound too tight. We’re just more in tune with the fact that time is the only thing we can’t get back. The others, they catch up sooner or later, right around the time we’re already thinking about lunch, or maybe even dinner, depending on how particularly ambitious the day has been.
They’ll call us obsessive, maybe even joyless, or the kind of people who feel a quiet thrill when the dishwasher is unloaded before noon. That’s quite alright. Let them. While they’re still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes and wondering why the day feels like it’s already half over, we’ve already written the page, walked the dog, answered the emails, and maybe even enjoyed a second bonus cup of coffee.
The jury is out on whether being a morning person is a blessing or a curse. I suppose it depends on which way you look at it.
I'm not convinced that morning people are better. We’re just earlier. In a world that seems hell bent on wasting as many daylight hours on scrolling, sitting in traffic, arguing, and other nonsense as possible, showing up first still feels like a small, stubborn act of rebellion. Truth be told, being a morning person might be one of the few acts of rebellion we’ve got left.
All for now. Make this a wonderful day.
