It wasn't that long ago that I was beating my cell phone and mumbling to my mother "Five more minutes please" as I dreaded getting up and facing yet another school day. I would consider myself a morning person but there is something about waking up on someone else's terms that always irked me. Twelve years of early mornings made me swear off those A.M. classes in college. Of course I was not the only one with this idea and therefore ended up taking more 8:00 a.m. classes than I desired, blame my procrastination and late registration. Still being young, agile, and full of energy the ability to sleep four hours and then stay out all night never fazed me. Something I took for granted then but was told by my mom repeatedly "this isn't going to last forever" and sadly, like with mostly everything she tells me, she was right.
Long gone are the days of sleeping at 3:00 a.m. and waking up at 7:00 a.m. for work. No more multiple nights of no sleep with little repercussion. Welcome to the world of bags under your eyes and yawning every five minute if you sleep a minute under seven hours. Here is to looking like the Crypt Keeper's younger sister when I don't get a "good night" sleep. So that's what they mean by beauty sleep? It all makes sense!
I currently have a job that wakes me up at 6:15 a.m. every morning. You might not think this is too bad, and technically it isn't. I've had jobs where I had to rise at 3:00 a.m. and take 2 buses and 3 trains to make it to work on time. Still, I was younger then, full of life, hopeful about the world and it's surroundings. Right now I just want to get more sleep or at least some caffeine in my system. I'm starting to believe that the worst version of yourself is present in the few second from when you are woken up by your alarm and you press snooze. In the past few weeks I have developed a cheat sheet to try to combat the "I hate my life, I'm going to punch someone" feeling that I get every time I hear my alarm.
- Be prepared – Get your lunch ready the night before, and if possible your breakfast. The least amount of time you have to worry about the food you are going to put in your stomach the more time you have to catch up on ZZZ’s. Also picking out your outfit the night before might make you feel like you are still living in your mother’s house but your sleep will thank you for eliminating the time consuming activity.
- Caffeine or whatever your pick me up is – Starbucks isn't a billion dollar industry because people “like” coffee it’s because most of America needs it to get through their day. It is not rare to hear people say “Don’t talk to me before I've had my coffee” and there is a reason for that. I don’t really drink coffee, only on really rare “I've slept less than five hours” occasions, still I get my caffeine fix with black tea. It also doesn't have to be caffeine, for some people it’s their protein shakes, or fruit smoothies. Everyone has their morning pick me up, whatever it is get it in your system fast to avoid the grumpy “don’t talk to me look."
- Don’t survive on an empty stomach for too long – This might seem like it’s connected to the previous one but if you are like me, trying to make it through the morning on an empty stomach is nearly impossible. I always love the idea of a good hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, pancakes, etc. yet I would probably function like a log if I actually consumed all that food before work. I am the worst at eating healthy, my friends and my body will tell you this, still I try to make that effort. If I don’t eat in the mornings I only end up screaming a few hundred times at everyone in my office about how hungry I am, so I do it for my coworkers you should probably do it for yourself.
- A positive attitude looks good on you- Now I am not saying that everyone that wakes up early is a raging asshole, this one is mostly to remind me that if you start your day on a bad foot it could easily set a negative tone for the rest of your day. Sometimes when I let my early grumps fester I notice a less than favorable chain of events. Stubbing my toe when I wake up can make me late to leave my apartment, making me miss my bus, making me late to work. All this before I have even step foot at my job. When I used to have the commute from hell, two hours on public transportation to get to a less than stellar job, right before I would walk through the door I thought to myself “My day is halfway over.” Though it was a lie because my day had unfortunately not even really begun it made me feel better. It was like saying to myself “the hard part is done, let’s do this!”
- Music, it helps. – There is a reason that people say that music heals and in my case music has the ability to shake me out of my morning blues. When I lived in New York and had the shortest commute to work to date (5 minutes on the N train) I would pick a song to get me through every morning. A few of my favorites where Nada Surf’s “Weightless” , Modest Mouse “Custom Concern” and Pavement “Gold Soundz.” Whether you want to scream your lungs out in your car to some Nirvana, or get down to some Katy Perry let the music speak to you, well hopefully it won’t lull you back to sleep ;)
Hope you find these tips useful, and if you are one of the lucky mythical “morning people” I admire and salute you!
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