I have morning issues lately. I think winter mornings are particularly difficult for me. I’m ok getting up early when the sun is up, but when it’s dark and cold I just want to stay in bed. It’s hard when you share a bed and a routine with someone else. My husband is a very busy guy and I admire that even with all he does, he still finds time to work out several times a week. The thing is, he exercises in the morning. He has even run a marathon so there have been many mornings when he has been out of bed at 5 a.m. He also goes to bed late and he seems able to run on less sleep than I require. But that’s another issue. I’m thinking about waking time right now.
We have come to an agreement that we will get up at 6 a.m. 4 days a week, and 7 a.m. on the other 3 days. I told hubby that is reasonable. I simply can’t do the 5 a.m. thing though. He agrees that is reasonable. I have to admit that I’m struggling to keep my end of the bargain on our new schedule. I end up falling back asleep half of the time. He’s fine with that, but I don’t like it. I often have nightmares if I wake and then go back to sleep. It’s crazy.
I realize if my kids were in traditional school, I would have to get up that early anyway. When my son went to the school for children with autism, we had to have him out the door at 6:20 a.m. everyday. I’ve done my time waking up early. It’s just now that I’m home ALL day doing homeschool, the day gets REALLY long if it starts at 6 a.m. If you are home ALL day doing homeschool and some days your husband is gone until late at night, the day becomes unbearable. That extra hour or so in the morning seems to give me sanity.
If I had my way, I would get up at 7:30 or 8:00 each day. That sounds really nice. I don’t like to sleep too late or then the day feels like it’s gone before it even starts. Most work and school schedules require an earlier rise time. I bet most of you get up earlier each day.
I have many memories of very early mornings when I was growing up. I know I got up early for school. When I was very young, I woke up early on Saturdays to watch cartoons. I never woke my parents up though, I just got up and did my thing. I remember that it became harder to wake up early when I became a teenager. It was especially hard in high school and that is when school started the earliest. I learned a very important lesson in my first year of college. I signed up for a 7:30 a.m. class in the winter in Logan, Utah. Never have I had such miserable mornings as those! It was so cold and dark that I wanted to cry each morning when the alarm would go off each day. Of course it didn’t help that my roommate and I would stay up half the night giggling!
As a married adult, I woke up early so I could fit in college and work. Then once kids came along, there was no choice on when to wake. They become your alarm clock. One that goes off at any time and all the time. The years of being a young parent are extremely sleep-deprived. I remember being so tired once that I woke up with my daughter lying across my chest and I was panicked because I didn’t know where she was. It doesn’t make sense, but I remember that it was a very real feeling.
Waking time is something that seems to vary with the stage of life. It’s something interesting to document because it tells a lot about what your life is like right now. I encourage you to jot down the times that you wake up each day and explain why you rise at the time you do.
All great things to document on a Memory Monday!
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