I have spent my whole life hating mornings. We all have our individual body clocks that march to a circadian rhythm of their own beat. My clock has always like the quiet of night. I remember crawling out of my crib as a toddler in the dead of night and roaming the house, even occasionally sneaking outside on the farm while all the big people were asleep. 6am is the time when I am in my deepest sleep, snug and warm with dreams racing through my head. I hate hate hate that weekday morning alarm clock that robs me of the kind of wake up I have always liked...lazy, warm with the sun streaming into the room. 8 am workdays have always been a struggle, a necessary evil in this life.
Turns out up here in Alaska, the land of the midnight sun, that people have a rhythm of their own as well. On my first day at work I came through the door at 7:45 and felt a little wave of panic. Everyone was already there hard at work. I checked to make sure I had the time zone right, but yup, I was indeed 15 mins earlier than I planned, but clearly the last to arrive. When I asked my colleagues in my area what time they usually started their shift, I had to stifle a grimace when I heard "I clock in at 5:45." "6 for me." In the spring and summer here, you can have 8 hours of work and 8 hours of sunlight to play in. It appeared I was going to have to face the alarm clock even earlier. And so that night I set for alarm for 5am with dread.
When the alarm went off at 5, I got up, turned on the coffee, got dressed and headed to work. I think I made it the whole way there before my body and brain realized we weren't just getting up for a middle of the night glass of water. The day went pretty smoothly, but I headed for bed by 10, a lot earlier than I have gone to bed in years.
Next day, same thing. That need for snooze alarms and feeling of absolute lethargy were missing. It seems that getting up before I hit that "dead to the world 6 am phase" is not nearly as bad as waking up after it hits. I have held on to some of my routines...I still like to hit the snooze button at least three times, despite years of clear evidence showing that no real rest is gained in these furtive, pitiful 5 minute intervals. The cats have a routine too. At the exact moment of the third alarm when I make a move to get up, the normally antisocial cat runs to the light of the phone and snuggles in for an ill timed attempt to cuddle. One day it will be the demise of me and I will wake up at 10am, several hours late for work, and have to explain that the cat made me do it. But so far I have made it. I think I have even gotten used to it. The other day I stayed pretty late at work, so decided to sleep in til 6. I was rewarded by seeing moose on the roadside on the drive to Anchorage. I was pretty excited to spot my first moose in months...but then I got to thinking that maybe I was just up earlier than the moose on all the other days, which is somewhat unsettling, because I started to wonder if the moose was getting more sleep than me. Moose envy? Maybe a little. But in the end, early mornings are better than plain mornings, but with 18 hours of daylight, who can even tell?
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