I miss getting up early. A
simple enough problem with an easy solution;
Get up early.
Here is my first world
dilemma:
Lately I have lounged in bed
anywhere up to 10, 11, even 12 o’clock. My body’s demand for 8 hour slumber
muffles alarm clocks and has serendipitously drained my cell phone of battery. Getting
up at 8 a.m. is a feat right now. My bones protest. Coffee prods movement but
the brain is lackluster and here is why I am whiny.
I am a writer who likes to write
in the morning. The best sentences are milled before the sun is up.
The cause is my bread and
butter job. My shift ends at 2:30 a.m. I do not get into an actual supine
position until after 3 a.m. and to lull my noisy brainwaves I need to read. I'm
lucky there (as my knuckles drub a piece of nearby wood). Reading rapidly
thickens my lids no matter how good or bad the material maybe. Same with movies.
It doesn't matter the content. But I don't watch too many movies anymore.
I long for the days when work
forced me up at 4 a.m. to make my 6 a.m. shift but the flip side, for the
writer, was the adjustment to my bio rhythms. My blood was geared for the same
bat time same bat channel every day. There was satisfaction rising with the
sun, a mug of strong coffee and a fresh screen/page that I gleefully speared
for hours.
Those mornings are very far
away right now.
I have tried to fool myself
into thinking that when I wake up (it's almost 10 a.m. by the way) it is actually
the same magical dawn hour when my words were ready for harvest. Unlike dawn,
however, the day is already under way. Appointments to keep. Friends to lunch
with. Laundry room vacant (got to get my stuff in there quick living in an apartment).
But it’s all wrong for writing.
I have also tried the
vampiric approach. Mining for words in the wee hours. Somehow, it’s not
registering. Night distractions are worse than days. Cats perform their somnambulistic
routines. Husband snores from the bedroom. More laundry glares undone from the
corner. And this is the time I like to read.
Don’t worry. As soon as I change
shifts I’ll be whining about how I can’t write in the mornings. I can repeat
this blog and insert ‘night’ for ‘day’, sick cycle that this is.
The only temporary cure I can
come up with for this blip on my creative radar is to keep doing what I am
doing.
Which is writing…
