Tales of the Anti-Morning Person

Any time I open up a new blog post and spend 20 minutes trying to figure out some topics or a theme for tonight's posting, I'm better off giving in to the temptation that often alludes me: sleep. Since I grown accustomed to being able to function with about 6 hours of sleep, I often wonder how much better I'd function with an extra 30 minutes or hour of sleep. Of course, I always contemplate the issue, and then I sit here at 11pm and I'm as wide awake as I was 12 hours ago. It's alright, one of these days it will catch up to me and I'll be ready to pass out before Letterman comes on. If and when that day ever comes, I'll actually be able to properly function in the morning before 10am.

Basically, my biological clock hasn't fully evolved since graduating college. And now that I'm two years removed from that college lifestyle, I'm not sure when the altered clock will come around. I feel like my body is observing daylight savings time while the rest of the world is running a little ahead. It's funny because I would like to eventually be one of those people who's wide awake, gone for a run, shaved, showered, downed a cup of OJ, some coffee, a bowl of cereal, read the newspaper, and opened a shelter for underprivileged children all before Good Morning America is over. One day, my friends, one day.

Instead, I am the night owl. I sit here watching television, cruising the internet, blogging, and wasting time, simply because it doesn't feel right to hit the sack before midnight. I can't figure out why. Maybe I feel like I'm missing out on a part of my day. Maybe because I haven't regularly retired for the day at such an early hour since I was in middle school, or because going to bed early reminds me of being sick. Kinda like Campbell's soup: won't eat it on normal circumstances because it's something I always eat when I'm under the weather. Call it negative connotations or what have you, the point is understood.

Problem is that once I actually crash, I'm a very heavy sleeper. I need nothing short of heavy duty construction equipment to wake me up. I'm talking "sleep through a tornado and the world could come crumbling down" and I'm still snoozing. I love the snooze button. In fact, I set my cell phone alarm and the cell phone alarm and I still don't wake up. I once set a record for hitting the snooze button every 9 minutes for about 1.5 hours. Luckily, I don't recall actually being late for anything important.

In fact, the one thing that will actually wake me up is the real telephone (landline). Thankfully, the Jessica loves me enough to give me a wake up call about 4 days per week. She used to give me a hard time about it, but I think she's over it after I convinced her that it's a nice opportunity for us to chat for a few minutes each morning. Then the problem is that in one fell swoop, I'll fall back into bed. Bad news indeed.

Don't get me wrong: If I have something important in the morning, i.e. meeting, appointment, other event, then I'll get my act together. I never said I wasn't reliable, but rather that I have "issues" with mornings. In fact, it's nice when I can avoid them altogether, like on the occasion when I can sleep-in on the weekends. That's one of the great feelings in life: knowing that you when you go to sleep on a weekend night knowing that you don't have to wake up for anything important the next morning. Love it.

Now, if I could just draw myself away from this caffeine addiction that I've obtained from not missing a morning cup of coffee for two years now. That's another story for another day. But hey, you have to go with whatever works to give you a kickstart in the AM, especially when you're an anti-morning person like me.

Good night.